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Questions
to Guide Your Reading
T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets (selections): 1. What do you suppose Eliot means when he says "human kind cannot bear very much reality"? Give evidence from the poem for your argument. 2. Why is it that "only through time, time is conquered"? 3. Why is it that "Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter"? Have you ever experienced what Eliot is talking about? 4. Notice that Eliot begins "East Coker with the line: "In my beginning is my end." The last verse contains the line: "In my end is my beginning." Is this a contradiction? Or does he have something else in mind? If so, what? 5. A "heaving groaner" is a buoy that has a bell on it to warn ships away from a reef. What sort of time is measured by the clang of such a bell, according to Eliot? With what sort of time does he contrast the tolling of the bell? 6. For whom is it possible "to apprehend the point of intersection of the timeless with time"? Why is this the occupation of a saint? 7. What is "the hint half guessed, the gift half understood"? Why is this an "impossible union"? 8. What, according to Eliot, is the "use of memory"? 9. Why according to Eliot is "a people without history not redeemed from time"? What do we learn from history? |