Mr T. S. Eliot has often shown a preoccupation with childhood, and at times this preoccupation has shown itself as a search for a lost Eden. In Burnt Norton the leaves are alive with the laughter of children:

In Little Gidding there are

‘the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Moreover, as the waves of the sea recall the river-god from The Dry Salvages that ‘was present in the nursery, so the apple- tree, acting as a double symbol, recalls both the expulsion from the garden and the cross that made redemption possible.

This theme has found its repetition in the plays, notably in The Family Reunion, where Harry speaks nostalgically of the hollow tree in which he played ‘Injuns’ and regrets the summerhouse that has been put in its place ‘to please the children’. For the question that confronts Harry is ‘Who am I?’—a question, in some form or other, that all Mr Eliot’s dramatis personae have to answer. In The Confidential Clerk the problem is intensified because there the question or quest of self-identification is closely allied with that of heredity and illegitimacy. In The Cocktail Party the problem is the same, though there the quest is concealed in the question.