Four Quartets

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).