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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 in Part III of "The Dry Salvages" that the mind of a man may be intent, at the time of death, on whatever sphere of what?

2. The speaker's interlocutor in Part II of "Little Gidding" says that "next year's words await another" what?

3. Part I of "Little Gidding" states that there is "no wind, but" what in the "dark time of the year"?

4. It is said in Part II of "The Dry Salvages" that man cannot think of "a future that is not liable / Like the past, to have no" what?

5. The speaker states in Part III of "Little Gidding" that "It is not to ring the bell backward / Nor is it an incantation / To summon the spectre of a" what?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is "Time the destroyer" also "time the preserver," as stated in Part II of "The Dry Salvages"?

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

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

4. What is the significance of the lines in Part II of "The Dry Salvages," "Only the hardly, barely prayable / Prayer of the one Annunciation"?

5. What is the meaning of "Behovely" as it is used in the phrase, found in Part III of "Little Gidding" that, "Sin is Behovely"?

6. 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."

7. Why is the "strong brown god" of Part I of "The Dry Salvages" "almost forgotten / By the dwellers in cities"?

8. What is meant by the speaker's interlocutor's phrase that "next year's words await another voice" in Part II of "Little Gidding"?

9. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part V of "The Dry Salvages" that "to apprehend / The point of intersection of the timeless / With time, is an occupation for the saint"?

10. What is meant in Part III of "Little Gidding" by "not less of love but expanding / Of love beyond desire, and so liberation / From the future as well as the past"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Time is one of the three major components of The Four Quartets, and is pondered, questioned, and considered throughout the four poems. Of particular importance in Part I of "Burnt Norton" is the consideration the speaker makes of the past, particularly its relationship to possibility. Analyze this relationship in a thoughtful essay. What is time? What are the two distinct notions of time which Eliot considers throughout the poems? What is the past? How does the past relate to the present and to the future? How does one speak of the possibilities of the past? How does the past influence the possibilities of the present and the future? What images are associated with the past and its perceived and unperceived possibilities?

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

One of the most complicated metaphysical threads running through The Four Quartets is Eliot's conception of Time as a whole. It is constantly surrounded by paradoxes and non sequitur. In a thorough and thoughtful analytical essay, unpack the complications surrounding Eliot's conception of Time. How does his thinking contrast with that of convention? How are the past, present, and future distinct and yet comparable? In what do they each consist? How are they unified? How is time an imperfection? How is man outside of time? How is man nonetheless constrained to temporal existence?

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