Question

Great walls of emerald,
City that is afar,

We gallop along,
Alert and penetrating,
5 Roads open about us,
Housetops keep at a distance.

Soft-curling tendrils,
Swim backwards from our image
We are a red bulk
10 Projecting the angular city in shadows at our feet.

Black coarse-squared figures,
Bump and growl and assemble;
It is the city that takes us to itself,
Vast thunder riding down strange skies.

15 An arch under which we slide
Divides our lives for us,
After we have passed it
We know we have left something behind
We shall not see again.

20 Passivity,
Gravity,
Are changed into hesitating, clanking pistons and wheels.
The trams come whooping up one by one,
Yellow pulse-beats spreading through darkness.

25 Movie posters squall out,
The passengers shrivel together,
As I enter indelicately into their souls.

It is a glossy skating rink
On which winged spirals clasp and bend each other,
30 And suddenly slide backwards towards the center,
After a too-brief release.

A second arch is a wall
To separate our souls from disintegrating cables
Of stale greenness.

35 A shadow cutting off the country from us,
Out of it rise crimson walls,
Yet I revolt;

I bend, I twist myself,
I curl into a million convolutions:
40 Shapes without angle,
Anything to be soft and woolly,
Anything to escape.

Sudden lurch of clamors,
Two more viaducts
45 Stretch out red yokes of steel,
Crushing my rebellion.

My soul
shrieking
Is jolted forwards by a long fiery bar
50 Soft-into direct distances,
It pierces the small of my back.
17
When the narrator states, "It is the city that takes us to itself" he is implying that
A.
the city is a shadowy presence that creates division among people.
B.
the city is a comforting and familiar place.
C.
the city is a living thing that dominates over the people who enter it.
D.
the city is a strange and unknowable place.

Answer 1

C. The city is a living thing that dominates over the people who enter it.

Explanation: phrases like "takes us to itself," "vast thunder," "crushing my rebellion," and the mechanical imagery (pistons, viaducts, jolted forwards) portray the city as an active, overpowering force that absorbs and controls the people.