The Great Figure quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Great Figure”?

   • Romantic Poetry, Ode & Pastoral Verse
   • Victorian Poetry, Ballad & Narrative Verse
   • Correct answer: Imagism, Free Verse & Modernist Poetry
   • Confessional Poetry, Sonnet & Elegy
   • Beat Poetry, Spoken Word & Protest Verse

   Imagism, Free Verse & Modernist Poetry is the best fit. The poem presents one clear, exact image (a gold 5 on a red fire truck), uses no rhyme or regular meter, and was published in 1921, when modernist poets were breaking with older forms.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What does the speaker see among the rain and lights?

   • Correct answer: A gold number 5 on a red fire truck that is moving past
   • A gold number 5 lit up on a red sign above a theater
   • A red number 5 on a gold streetcar stopped at a corner
   • A gold numeral on the red door of a nearby fire station

   The speaker says “I saw the figure 5 / in gold / on a red / firetruck / moving.” The number is gold, the truck is red, and the truck is in motion, not parked. Williams later wrote, in his Autobiography (1951), that a fire engine roared past as he arrived at the New York studio of the painter Marsden Hartley, and that he wrote the poem on the spot.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What does the poem tell us about the setting?

   • A quiet country road on a bright and windy autumn afternoon
   • A busy city street at noon, dry and lit by full summer sun
   • A burning building at night, its flames lighting the whole block
   • Correct answer: A city street in rain and lights, with the city around it dark

   The poem opens “Among the rain / and lights” and ends “through the dark city.” That is all it gives: wet weather, scattered lights and darkness. It never mentions a fire or a burning building, and it never names the city.

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4. 4

   Question 4. Match the word to its meaning as it is used in the poem (“tense / unheeded”):

   • Watched closely and carefully by people nearby
   • Not yet able to stop or slow its forward motion
   • Correct answer: Not noticed or paid attention to by anyone
   • Lacking any clear purpose or place to go to

   To heed something is to pay attention to it, so “unheeded” means not noticed or not attended to. The truck rushes by with its gong and siren, yet the poem says it goes unheeded. Many readers take this as the heart of the poem: a loud, urgent, brilliant sight that the city does not stop to notice, though the speaker does.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What does "Onomatopoeia" mean in this story?

   • Repeating the same vowel sound in nearby words
   • Correct answer: Words whose sound imitates the noise they name
   • Giving human feelings to an object or a machine
   • Comparing two unlike things using like or as

   Onomatopoeia is the use of words that sound like the noise they describe. “Clangs,” “howls” and “rumbling” all imitate the sounds of the passing fire truck, so the reader hears the truck as well as sees it.

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6. 6

   Question 6. How is the poem built?

   • Fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter laid out as a sonnet
   • Correct answer: Fourteen short, unrhymed lines that form one single sentence
   • Seven rhyming couplets, each one a complete sentence of its own
   • Three stanzas of free verse, each a sentence about a new scene

   The poem is one stanza of fourteen short lines and one sentence: its only period comes after “through the dark city.” It has no rhyme and no regular meter, which is what free verse means. The single sentence keeps the reader moving, the way the truck keeps moving, until it is gone.

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7. 7

   Question 7. Many lines hold only one or two words (“in gold,” “moving,” “tense”). What effect do the short lines most likely have?

   • They hide a strict rhyme scheme that only appears when read aloud
   • They show the speaker is too frightened to finish his thoughts
   • They mark the places where the speaker stops to explain a point
   • Correct answer: They slow the reader so each detail flashes up on its own, like a glimpse

   Line breaks are Williams’s main tool. Because a line like “in gold” or “moving” stands alone, the reader pauses on it and sees one detail at a time: the gold, then the red, then the motion. The sentence runs on across the breaks, so the poem feels both quick and broken into flashes, much like catching sight of a truck that is gone in seconds.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What double meaning can the title “The Great Figure” be read as playing on?

   • Correct answer: Figure as a written number (the 5) and as an important, larger-than-life presence
   • Figure as a sum of money spent and as the final total on a bill
   • Figure as the firefighter’s body and as a shape drawn in a painting
   • Figure as a rough guess or estimate and as the outline of a building

   In the poem, the “figure” is literally the numeral 5. But a great figure can also mean an important person, a hero or a celebrity. Many readers take the title as a playful hint that the plain number on a truck is the star of the poem, treated with the attention usually given to a great man. No firefighter or person other than the speaker appears in the poem.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Which best describes how the poem presents its subject, in the Imagist manner?

   • It tells a long story about a fire and the firefighters who fight it
   • It ends on a stated moral about courage and duty in the modern city
   • Correct answer: It shows the scene in exact images and never tells us what to think
   • It describes the speaker’s feelings at length before naming the sight

   Imagism asked poets to present clear, exact images and to cut every word that did not help. The poem does just that: color, motion and sound, with no comment or moral. The speaker appears only in “I saw,” and the poem never says what the moment means. The reader is left to feel it.

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10. 10

    Question 10. The truck moves “with weight and urgency” yet goes “unheeded.” Which reading does this contrast best support?

    • The city’s fire service is too slow to reach the fire in time
    • Correct answer: A striking sight can pass unnoticed in a busy city, seen by only one watcher
    • The speaker is annoyed by the noise and wants the truck to stop
    • The firefighters are careless and ignore the people on the street

    The truck is heavy, urgent and loud, yet nobody seems to pay attention, except the speaker who says “I saw.” Many readers take the poem as a lesson in looking: ordinary city life is full of striking things that rush past unnoticed, and the poet’s job is to stop and see them. Nothing in the poem says the truck is late, that the speaker is annoyed, or that firefighters do anything at all.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Which work of art did Williams’s friend Charles Demuth make in homage to this poem?

    • Nighthawks, a 1942 painting of a city diner
    • American Gothic, a 1930 painting from Iowa
    • Christina’s World, a 1948 painting of a field
    • Correct answer: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, a 1928 painting

    Charles Demuth, a painter Williams had known since his student days in Philadelphia, made I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold in 1928. It is a portrait of Williams with no face in it: a red fire truck, city lights and a gold 5 repeated in smaller and smaller sizes, as if the truck were moving away, with the name Bill and the initials W.C.W. worked into the picture. It hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Nighthawks is by Edward Hopper, American Gothic by Grant Wood, and Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth.

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