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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. The speaker says near the end of Part III of "Little Gidding" that "We have taken from the defeated / What they had to leave us--a" what?

2. The speaker of Part III of "The Dry Salvages" states that there is a voice descanting what?

3. The speaker tells his auditor in the first part of "Little Gidding" that "If you came this way... At any time or at any season... you would have to put off" what?

4. "Over the asphalt where no other sound was," what does the speaker of Part II of "Little Gidding" hear?

5. What does the first line of "Little Gidding" say is its own season?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part I of "Little Gidding" that "prayer is more / Than an order of words, the conscious occupation / Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying"?

2. What is meant by the phrase, in Part V of "Little Gidding," "Every poem [is] an epitaph"?

3. What is significant about the speaker's discussion of the strangeness of the sea in relation to man, in Part I of "The Dry Salvages"?

4. Explain what is meant by the paradoxical statement in Part V of "The Dry Salvages," "music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all."

5. What is meant by the line, "You are not the same people who left that station," in Part III of "The Dry Salvages"?

6. What is meant by saying in the final part of "Little Gidding" that "history is a pattern / Of timeless moments"?

7. What does the speaker mean when he states, in the last part of "The Dry Salvages," that "Here the impossible union / Of spheres of existence is actual"?

8. How can one be "redeemed from fire by fire," as is stated in Part IV of "Little Gidding"?

9. What characterizes the "gifts reserved for age" which the interlocutor of Part II of "Little Gidding" describes to the poem's speaker?

10. What does the speaker mean in Part III of "The Dry Salvages" when he states that, "the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray / Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Part IV of "The Dry Salvages" is written as though a prayer to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. This demonstrates a deep relationship between prayer and poetry, both in structure and content. In an insightful essay, analyze this relationship as it is presented in the poem. What is prayer? What is poetry? How are the two alike one another? How are they distinct? In what essence are they united? How is the prayer in Part IV poetical? How is the poetry throughout the work often like a prayer? Why is poetry particularly suitable to prayer? How does this relationship illuminate interpretation of the whole of The Four Quartets?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

In a thoughtful analytical essay, discuss the significance of "East Coker" as one part of the whole work. What is the overall signification of the poem? What is the significance of each of the parts? How does the poem as a whole relate to the whole of the work? How does each part thus relate? What images are the most powerful and significant? What insights into time, the world, and the human person are contained within the poem?

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