26 pages • 52 minutes read
T. S. EliotFour Quartets
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Acceptance as a Spiritual Gesture
Throughout all four of the “Four Quartets,” the speaker of the poem addresses the difficulty of living with internal conflict. He identifies normal human experiences with internal conflict in philosophical and spiritual terms, claiming they are not actually conflicting but are realities of life. Though the speaker acknowledges the irrationality of his message, he also endorses it, urging readers to find contentment and peace in acceptance of the unknowable. For the speaker, graceful acceptance of the contradictions of reality and the irrationality of life and death is the only way forward.
The speaker points out that humans tend to distract themselves from what they cannot accept. The unknowability of death, for example, is too frightening to contemplate, so distraction enables humans to maintain a comfortable distance from fearful truths. As the speaker ages, however, he moves closer to death and this proximity enables him to be more accepting of his future. According to the ghostly figure from the speaker’s past, such acceptance is a gift and one the young find difficult to understand.
Prayer is one way to near oneself to a state of acceptance, and the speaker advocates for Christian prayer as well as non-Christian approaches to prayer. In the rose garden of “Burnt Coker,” the backdrop of nature enables the speaker to access important realizations regarding what “[p]rotects mankind from heaven and damnation” (Line 83). As well, the meditative conversation the speaker has with the ghostly figure in “Little Gidding” parallels the legendary conversation between Krishna and Arjuna to which the poet alludes in “The Dry Salvages.” Christian spirituality and prayer are clear routes to equanimity, but both nature and other humans have the potential to help foster acceptance.
The Process of Aging
The passage of time, according to the speaker of the poems, does not make rational sense, even when time’s effects are visible on one’s own body. For the speaker, the present is elusive and the past and the future can be discussed in the same terms, which further confuses matters. For readers of the “Four Quartets” at the time of its publication, during wartime in the 1940s, Eliot’s examinations of time, memory, and history may have been either reassuring and alarming, as civilians and soldiers alike hope to survive the war and enjoy the future during which they can naturally age with loved ones.
The speaker of the poem makes several self-referential remarks about the effect of time passing on his work as a poet. In these deeply personal sections of the poems, Eliot reveals his own self-doubt regarding his efforts to write and endure the “intolerable wrestle” (Line 249) with language. He specifies the 20 years between the two World Wars as he reflects on his work and compares it to the work of others who fought a definable enemy and died for their country. As Eliot reveals his own internal conflicts in the poem, he offers self-assurance in the words of the ghostly figure from his past who encourages him to accept the passage of time as a gift—an important overall theme of the “Four Quartets.”
At two places in the poem, the mention of children in Edenic settings is juxtaposed against the weight and burden of the speaker’s experience of aging. In the first quartet, children appear in the natural foliage of the rose garden, laughing and reminding the speaker of the enduring quality of youth and, therefore, humanity. Though humans are deeply flawed, the image of children laughing in “Burnt Norton” offers a positive message: As long as humans with the tendency to sin exist, children who laugh will also exist. Children also appear in the fourth quartet toward the end of the poem and the series, and again, they appear in nature—in an apple tree. As the end of “Little Gidding” nears, the children are in an Edenic setting once more; the inevitability of their sin is human and need not be alarming.
The Role of Spirituality in Modern Life
Throughout the poems, the speaker discusses the value of living according to the oldest, most well-established spiritual beliefs, as well as ways of living that imply a kind of paganism, as they encourage harmony and cooperation with nature. At the same time, the speaker challenges old thought patterns, revealing a sense of disillusion with Christian traditions that no longer seem relevant as the modern world continues to change. Though seemingly paradoxical, this theme, complete with its inherent contradictions, is consistent across the Modernist movement, of which Eliot was a part.
One specific tradition the speaker challenges and respects is that of religion, specifically the Anglican religion. Allusions to Jesus Christ and to hellfire and other Biblical references draw attention to the speaker’s anxiety about sin and what happens when the passage of time concludes for humans. Alongside these overtly Christian images are pagan images of that elevate the natural world. In “Burnt Norton,” the song that begins the second section of the poem is set against the natural beauty of the rose garden. The song contains abstract images that hint at pagan rituals or celebrations, a backdrop more clearly illustrated in the second poem “East Coker” that contrasts with didactic mentions of beliefs and morality traditionally linked with Christianity.
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