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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. With what are the "tattered arras" woven in Part I of "East Coker"?

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

3. What must there not be in the way wherein one goes in order to get "there," according to the speaker of Part III of "East Coker"?

4. The pattern of what, according to the speaker's meditation in Part V of "East Coker," becomes more complicated?

5. 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?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is meant in "Burnt Norton"'s first part by "What might have been... a world of speculation," lines 6-8?

2. How is the "here" of Part III of "Burnt Norton" described, and what is significant about this description?

3. What is signified by the speaker's questioning of the deceitfulness of the "quiet-voiced elders" in Part II of "East Coker"?

4. 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"?

5. 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"?

6. What is meant in the lines, "But to what purpose... I do not know," in the first part of "Burnt Norton"?

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Each of The Four Quartets is both united to the others and yet distinct with a complete meaning unto itself. Discuss the principal themes in "Burnt Norton," including time, the past, stillness, motion, and pattern, indicating the ways in which they are unified and present a coherent thought. How are these themes presented in the poem? What unites them? How are they, as a coherent whole, related to the other poems in the work? What is the significance of these relations? How do they help to unveil the overall meaning of "Burnt Norton"? How does this overall meaning contribute to interpretation of the whole work?

Essay Topic 2

One of the recurring themes, but emphasized in "Burnt Norton," throughout The Four Quartets, is the notion of stillness as perfection. Analyze this notion as it is presented throughout the poems, focusing on the non-conventional ways in which stillness is spoken. What is stillness in the conventional sense? In what sense does Eliot speak of it in "Burnt Norton"? How is this different from the conventional sense? What characterizes Eliot's notion of stillness? Why is this notion of stillness a perfection? In what way is it related to movement? With what images and metaphors is it explicated and exposed? What is its overall importance in the poems?

Essay Topic 3

Pat III of "East Coker" is eminently concerned with man's feelings of anxiety in the modern world, particularly as he is left with a sense of being conscious of nothing, or the content of the things of which he is conscious being essentially nothing. Examine this prevalence of anxiety as it is presented in the poem. What is anxiety? What does anxiety do to a person? In the face of what is man made anxious? Why does he have these feelings of anxiety? What does this indicate about the nature of the human person? What does this indicate about the nature of the things with which man regularly occupies himself in the world? How is this significant to the meaning of the poem as a whole? How is it significant to the whole of The Four Quartets?

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