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.
5
Based on details from the passage, the reader can infer that the narrator
A.
feels liberated, because he describes himself as curling into "convolutions" and becoming a shape "without angle."
B.
is enthralled, because he describes seeing "emerald walls" and roads that "open about us."
C.
is frightened, because he describes "a shadow cutting off the country" and his "soul shrieking."
D.
feels trapped, because he wants to "revolt" and says that he would do "anything to escape."

Answer 1

D. feels trapped — the speaker says "Yet I revolt," describes curling into "anything to escape," and is physically crushed by "red yokes of steel," indicating imprisonment and a desire to get away.