Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- What is the overall tone of the poem? Is it hopeful? Resigned? Neither? How can you tell?
- How does Eliot use form to enhance the sound of the poem? What effect does the ever-changing rhyme scheme have on your reading experience?
- What role do newspapers play in the poem? Are they a symbol, or just a repeated image (or both)?
- Whose soul are we watching? Does he ever tell us? What does that soul represent?
- Are the four parts meant to fit together, or exist separately? What makes them differ from each other? What makes them fit together?