East Coker

Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot (1930)

When Eliot became a member of the Church of England in 1927, he found a meaning in life that had previously eluded him. Ash Wednesday is one of the first fruits of this religious conversion and thus marks a radical development from his earlier work, such as The Waste Land. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is dissatisfied with life and needs to construct a new way of being in the world. As the poem develops, he learns to accept religious faith, honor the value of prayer, seek divine mercy, and hope for salvation. In its Christian worldview and the hope it expresses for a sound basis on which to live, the poem resembles “East Coker.”

“Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot (1936)

This is the first of the Four Quartets, in which Eliot created the five-part structure that he would follow in the other poems. Burnt Norton is a manor house and garden in Gloucestershire, England, which Eliot visited with a friend in the summer of 1934. The first section of the poem likely recalls some of the pleasant impressions that the house, and especially the garden, made on him at the time. As a whole, this meditative poem is an exploration of the timeless moment, an experience that frees a person from desire, suffering, and compulsion. This eternal moment can only be found beyond the stream of time, but only in time can it be remembered and described, connected with the flow of past and future.

“Little Gidding” by T. S. Eliot (1942)

This is the last of Eliot’s Four Quartets. If “East Coker” is associated with the element of earth, “Little Gidding” is linked to fire. Little Gidding, like East Coker, is a village in England, located in Cambridgeshire. Also like East Coker, it has a long history: An Anglican religious community was founded there in 1626. Eliot visited the parish church there in May 1936 and wrote the poem during World War II. In “Little Gidding,” the speaker contemplates England’s past and present; he examines time and change and how the past intersects with the present in a timeless moment. The conclusion is not dissimilar to that of “East Coker”: the need for constant exploration and the experience of a moment in which end and beginning become the same.

“A Short Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s East Coker” by Oliver Tearle (n.d.)

Tearle works his way through each section of the poem, discussing themes and imagery. He also notes the elements that the poem shares with “Burnt Norton” and Eliot’s reference to Sir Thomas Elyot, whose work was published just a few years before the Protestant Reformation reached English shores. Tearle also notes the “cyclical notion of life” presented in the poem, as suggested in the phrase, “In my end is my beginning” (Line 211).

“Listening to East Coker” by Dwight Longnecker (2019)

Longnecker argues in the online journal the Imaginative Conservative that knowledge of Eliot’s biography, spirituality, and poetic technique is necessary for an understanding of the poem, which is a “consideration of time and eternity, destiny and desire.” Eliot reveals himself as a contemplative man seeking spirituality as a cure for modern malaise.

“Time and Faith in T. S. Eliot’s ‘East Coker’ (The Second of ‘Four Quartets’)” by Cindy C. Lange (2015)

Lange argues that although it is a given that Eliot was influenced by Eastern philosophy, “East Coker” embodies a linear concept of time as found in Christianity rather than the cyclical view of time that is associated with Eastern religion and philosophy.