Q 01/05

Which season does the famous opening of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land treat as something to be dreaded?

A) Spring

B) Summer

C) Autumn

D) Winter

Answer · why

A) Spring

Spring is cruel here because it forces dead ground back into life, while winter is remembered as a comforting stillness.

Q 02/05

Which American poet edited the drafts of The Waste Land so heavily that T. S. Eliot dedicated the poem to him?

A) Conrad Aiken

B) Ezra Pound

C) Robert Frost

D) Wallace Stevens

Answer · why

B) Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound compared himself to the poem's midwife, and his annotations can still be read in the published facsimile of the drafts.

Q 03/05

Which polar explorer's account of sensing an extra companion inspired a ghostly passage in The Waste Land?

A) Robert Falcon Scott

B) Roald Amundsen

C) Ernest Shackleton

D) Fridtjof Nansen

Answer · why

C) Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton felt a fourth presence on his exhausted march across South Georgia, and Eliot's lines about it later gave the 'third man factor' its...

Q 04/05

The poet of The Waste Land also wrote the light verse behind which long-running stage musical?

A) Evita

B) Annie

C) Grease

D) Cats

Answer · why

D) Cats

Cats sets Eliot's 1939 collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to music, a long way from the despair of his most famous poem.

Q 05/05

What does Madame Sosostris, the fortune-teller in The Waste Land, use to foretell events later in the poem?

A) Tea leaves

B) Tarot cards

C) Crystal ball

D) Rune stones

Answer · why

B) Tarot cards

Tarot cards she turns over include a drowned sailor and a one-eyed merchant, and both figures surface again in later sections.