View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which of the following is found at the still point of the world, as described in Part II?
(a) The boar.
(b) The dance.
(c) The rose-garden.
(d) The heart of the world.

2. Which of the following does the speaker wish to hear of concerning old men, in "East Coker," Part II?
(a) Their lives.
(b) Their loves.
(c) Their folly.
(d) Their wisdom.

3. "Garlic and sapphires in the mud," described at the outset of Part II, clot what?
(a) The bedded axle-tree.
(b) The memory of inveterate scars.
(c) The still point of the turning world.
(d) The artery of truth.

4. The pattern of what, according to the speaker's meditation in Part V of "East Coker," becomes more complicated?
(a) Reality and appearance.
(b) Dead and living.
(c) Speaking and hearing.
(d) Truth and falsity.

5. What does the "wounded surgeon" ply in the first line of Part IV of "East Coker"?
(a) His wounds.
(b) His eyes.
(c) The cook.
(d) The steel.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what must the speaker "freeze / And quake" in order to be warmed, as described in "East Coker"'s fourth part?

2. What does the speaker say "Crack and sometimes break, under the burden," in Part V of "Burnt Norton"?

3. For the appeasement of what does the "trilling wire in the blood" of Part II in "Burnt Norton" sing?

4. What goes in and out of "unwholesome lungs" in Part III of "Burnt Norton"?

5. What does the speaker of East Coker parallel with "death" in the final lines of Part I of "East Coker"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is signified by the phrase in Part III of "East Coker," "the growing terror of nothing to think about"?

2. What is meant by "Only by the form, the pattern, / Can words or music reach / The stillness" in "Burnt Norton"'s fifth part?

3. What is an interpretative possibility for the final four lines of the first part of "East Coker"?

4. What does the speaker mean in Part II of "Burnt Norton" when he states at the still point of the turning world, "there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement"?

5. What is meant by the "intolerable wrestled / With words and meanings" in the second part of "East Coker"?

6. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part V of "Burnt Norton" that love is caught "in the form of limitation"?

7. What purpose is served by the string of paradoxical statements at the end of Part III of "East Coker"?

8. What is the purpose of the line, repeated and modified throughout the first part of "East Coker," "In my beginning is my end"?

9. What does the speaker mean in the latter lines of Part III of "Burnt Norton" when he states that "This is the one way, and the other / Is the same"?

10. What is a possible interpretation of the fourth part of "Burnt Norton"?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 985 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample