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T. S. EliotA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Given the context of Four Quartets and the copious commentary T. S. Eliot provided about the poems’ genesis and their intention, there is little interpretative doubt that the speaker is Eliot himself, an intellectual, fiercely learned student of comparative religion; a passionate convert to Anglican Catholicism with an unshakeable conviction in the viability and reality of the transcendent Christian plane that provides meaning and hope to the material world; a man in late middle age beginning to understand the depth of the realities of mortality; and, perhaps most importantly, a naturalized British citizen horrified by the devastation of Nazi aggression and torn by doubts over whether Britain would even survive the nightly onslaught of the Blitzkrieg.
Of each of the Four Quartets, in “Little Gidding” Eliot speaks most directly, most emotionally, to the reader. The poetic line is not exactly conversational (after all, Eliot seeks here to articulate mysteries that are, by his admission in Section 2, beyond the reach of words). Eliot speaks to the reader with urgency and immediacy, despite layers of complex and dense meaning. The speaker then wrestles to share the paradox of Christian faith: hope in a dark time is possible only through the purification of suffering itself and the uncompromising embrace of the terrifying and beautiful energy of Christ’s inscrutable love.
By T. S. Eliot
Ash Wednesday
T. S. Eliot
East Coker
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot
Journey of the Magi
T. S. Eliot
Mr. Mistoffelees
T. S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral
T. S. Eliot
Portrait of a Lady
T. S. Eliot
Preludes
T. S. Eliot
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
T. S. Eliot
The Cocktail Party
T. S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot
The Song of the Jellicles
T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land
T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent
T. S. Eliot