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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. If "we" in Part IV of "East Coker" do well in the whole earth, as "our hospital," of what shall we die?

2. To what shall the vortex in "East Coker," Part II, bring the world?

3. In conjunction with the assertion that the stillness shall be the dancing, the speaker postulates in "East Coker"'s third part that the darkness shall be what?

4. To whose funeral(s) do they all, in "East Coker," Part III, go?

5. Only by what does the speaker postulate in Part V of "Burnt Norton," that words or music can reach the stillness?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the speaker mean by commanding, in Part III of "East Coker," that one wait without hoping or loving, and that "the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting"?

2. What is the significance of the first 13 lines of "East Coker"?

3. What is an interpretative possibility for the scene the speaker describes in the open field in the first part of "East Coker"?

4. What is the significance of the "Eructation of unhealthy souls," mentioned in Part III of "Burnt Norton"?

5. What does it mean to say, as the speaker does in the final line of Part II of "Burnt Norton," that "Only through time time is conquered"?

6. Why is the final sentence of "East Coker" an inversion of the first sentence?

7. What is the significance of the statement in the fifth part of "Burnt Norton," "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break... Will not stay still"?

8. Why does the speaker claim in Part II of "Burnt Norton" that "To be conscious is not to be in time"?

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

10. What does the speaker mean in Part IV of "East Coker" when he states that "Our only health is the disease"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Part III of "Burnt Norton," the speaker discusses the "world of perpetual solitude." Examine this discussion in an expository essay. What is solitude? What does it mean for a person to be in solitude? What happens to a person who is continually in solitude? What would a "world of perpetual solitude" be? What sort of conditions afflict the person in such a world of perpetual solitude? How is this significant to the condition of modern man? How is understanding this sort of solitude significant to interpreting "Burnt Norton"? How is it important to interpreting the poem as a whole?

Essay Topic 2

Though explicitly mentioned only once, in Part V of "Burnt Norton," the Word, a conventional Christian signifier for Christ, is a vitally important concept to understanding the whole of The Four Quartets. Through careful exegesis, discuss the way in which the Word is central to the four poems. What is the Word? Why is Christ called the Word? What other significations does the Greek word "logos" have that are associated with Christ as the Word? In what way is this Word unlike all others? What is expressed by the Word? What is the relation of the Word to perfection? How is this Word, as perfection, within the world? What is significant about Its presence in the world? How can this be seen throughout the poem?

Essay Topic 3

One of the principal themes in the final part of "Burnt Norton" is the relationship between words, music, and pattern and form. Analyze this relationship in a thoroughly developed critical essay. In what does the relationship consist? How is the relationship significant? What are some instances of the way in which the relationship exists? Can any words or music exist without pattern and form? How does form enable words and music to "reach / The stillness"? What does this imply about the nature of pattern and form? What does it reveal about the natures of music and words?

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