A Game of Chess

Quiz: "A Game of Chess" by T. S. Eliot

1. Recall – Form & Structure: "A Game of Chess" is a section of a larger work. Name that work, identify its position within it, and state the year it was published.

1. Recall – Speaker & Setting: The poem contains two distinct scenes. Briefly describe the setting of each scene and identify the social class associated with each.

1. Recall – Key Image (Philomel): A painted or decorative image of Philomel appears in the first scene. According to the analysis, what myth does Philomel come from, what happened to her, and what does she symbolize in the poem?

1. Recall – Repeated Phrase: A phrase is repeated five times in the second scene. What is the literal source of this phrase, and what additional symbolic meaning does its repetition create?

1. Comprehension – Relationship Dynamics: In the first scene, the wealthy woman bombards her companion with urgent questions but receives little in return. What does this dynamic reveal about the state of their relationship, and which theme does it most directly illustrate?

1. Comprehension – Lil and Albert: In the pub scene, what pressure is placed on Lil, and what is the significance of Albert having been "demobbed"? How does Albert's situation connect the poem to its historical context?

1. Comprehension – Closing Allusion: The poem closes with a farewell borrowed from a Shakespeare play. Identify the character whose words are echoed, explain what happens to that character, and explain why Eliot's placement of this allusion at the end of the pub scene is significant.

1. Analysis – The Chess Metaphor: Explain how the title "A Game of Chess" functions as a symbol across both scenes of the poem. What does chess represent about the relationships depicted?

1. Analysis – Tone Shifts: The analysis describes the poem's tone as intentionally jarring, shifting at least twice. Identify the tonal shift between the two scenes and explain how Eliot uses this contrast to reinforce his broader message about modern life.

1. Analysis – Class and Literary Allusion: Eliot references Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in the opening of the first scene by replacing Cleopatra's grand barge with a private chair. What effect does this substitution create, and what does it suggest about Eliot's view of the modern world in relation to its literary and historical predecessors?

Answer Key

1. The poem is the second of five sections of The Waste Land, published in 1922.

1. The first scene is set in a wealthy woman's richly decorated private room (upper class); the second is set in a working-class pub at closing time (working class).

1. Philomel comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses; she was raped by King Tereus and transformed into a nightingale. She symbolizes violated beauty that refuses to be silenced, yet which the modern world largely ignores or fails to appreciate.

1. The phrase is a British pub landlord's call for last orders. Repeated five times, it builds a rhythmic sense of urgency and mortality — suggesting that time is running out not just for the pub's customers but for everyone in the poem.

1. The one-sided exchange — urgent questions met with dull, non-committal responses — reveals a profound failure of communication and emotional connection. It most directly illustrates the themes of loneliness and language and communication.

1. Lil is pressured by her friend to improve her appearance (specifically her teeth) before her husband Albert returns. Albert has recently been demobilized from the army, placing the scene firmly in the post-First World War period and reflecting the disruption the war caused to ordinary domestic life.

1. The closing words echo Ophelia's farewell in Hamlet just before she drowns. Positioned after the slurred goodnights of pub-goers, the allusion implies that the everyday women in the poem share something of Ophelia's tragic fate — a quiet destruction — elevating their ordinary suffering to a literary and universal dimension.

1. Chess symbolizes the empty rituals of a relationship: two people facing each other, making calculated moves, yet never truly connecting. Applied to both the wealthy couple and the working-class characters, it suggests that emotional stalemate and disconnection transcend social class.

1. The tone moves from oppressively ornate and claustrophobic (first scene) to raw, gossipy, and bluntly comedic (pub scene), before suddenly darkening at the close. This jarring contrast suggests that modern emptiness and despair are not confined to the privileged — they pervade all levels of society — and that no single mood or class is spared.

1. Replacing Cleopatra's magnificent barge with a private chair immediately deflates the grandeur of the original reference. This substitution suggests that the modern world is a diminished, reduced echo of its classical and Renaissance predecessors — a key idea running throughout The Waste Land.