高级英语第六册Lesson4《nettles》Para(39---43)详解

Unit Four Nettles1. Notes onGuide to Reading1) prolific (1.1)多产的prolific writer 多产作家synonyms: fecund, fertile, fruitful, productive.2) prestigious (1.3) esteemed 有名望的,著名的Prestigious university 名牌大学；名校Synonyms:celebrated, distinguished,eminent, illustrious, noted, preeminent, prominent, renowned3) dilemma (2.2)进退两难；困境To be, or not to be: that is the question (Shakespeare)Synonyms: deep water, hot water, predicament,4) be confronted with (2.3) face; meet with;encounter面对；遭遇5) regardless of (2.3) irrespective of 不管; 不管6) Love that was not usable, that knew its place. Not risking a thing yet staying alive as a sweet trickle, and underground resource. (Last line but one, Para. 2)空灵的爱,自知的爱；不危及任何东西, 却像涓涓细流,地下源泉,永不枯竭.精神之爱,知其进退；无损无害,如源头活水,滋润于心.7) retrospection (3.2) 回忆,回忆8) protagonist (3.2) The main performer in a theatrical production; : lead 主角9) effortlessly (3.4)Effortless: easyEasy as ABC, easy as falling off a log, easy as one-two-three, easy as pie, like taking candy from a baby, nothing to it.10) bridge the gap:搭配11) Thus the reader is apt to identify with the protagonist, feeling what she feels and worrying what worries her. (last line but one, Para. 3) Identify with ?12) address several essential problems (4.1) 搭配13) Once again Nettles" displays Munro s lasting strength …and subtle meanings of life. Lasting strength ?在尊麻〞中,Munro再次展示了其深厚功力,驭繁于简,情节虽然简单,却探索了复杂的人物感情和微妙的人生况味.2. Text AnalysisFrom paragraph 1 to paragraph 49A.必备语7匚(preparatory words and expressions 见词汇测试表B.逐段讲解1 .引子：回忆起1979年时见到的一个男人不交代是谁,留下悬念(suspense) 词汇：1) ketchup sandwich (1.2)夹番茄酱的三明治2 .数年之后,重寻故地,已物易人非.去年元夜时,花市灯如昼.月上柳梢头,人约黄昏后.今年元夜时,月与灯依旧.不见去年人,泪湿春衫袖.一生查子去年元夜时欧阳修去年今日此门中,人面桃花相映红.人面只今何处去桃花依旧笑春风题都城南庄崔护3 .回忆儿时情景,请人打井,由此开始一场早恋(puppy love).词汇：1) Well (line 1):水井2) Penned (line 3):圈养的Pig sty猪圈3) Mug (line 7):杯其他词义：(1) I got mugged/jumped on my wayhome.(2) The suspect is not among the mugshots.(3) Look at her ugly mug.4 . Mike McCallum 出场.交代打井人居无定所的生活,为之后和童年伴侣小Mike McCallum的别离埋下伏笔.5 .小Mike McCallum出场.交代两人都是8岁. 词汇：1) boarding house (5.1)提供膳宿的地方2) at hand (5.2) nearby 附近,手边6 .回忆和小Mike两小无猜的情景之一：在Mike父亲的车里玩耍；给被臭鼬所伤的狗抹番茄汁治伤.词汇：1) Cab (6.1):出租车；此处：驾驶室2) Mucky (6.4): dirty3) Sour-cheese boots (6.4):袜子发此臭奶酪的气味4) Skunk (6.6):臭鼬5) Spray (6.6):喷射句子：1) It looked as if we were washing him inblood (last line) 好似用血给它洗澡一样.7 .回忆农场的树木.句子：1)Each of the trees …crabby. (7.2-4)译：这里每颗树都神气活现的.比方,榆树宁静安详,橡树那么杀气腾腾,枫树慈祥可亲, 而山楂树那么老态龙钟、火气十足.8 .回忆一起过河情景.词汇：1) Scummy (8.3):长满浮渣的2) Scum: 人渣scum of the earthscum of the nation?句子：1) The river in August was almost as much astony road as it was a watercourse. (8.1) 译：8月的河是条水道,几乎也是一条石头路.2)•• plowing through mats of flat-leafed water lilies, trapping our legs in their snaky roots. (8.3-4)译：…吃力地在一团团长着扁平叶子的睡莲中蹿行,两腿被弯曲的睡莲根缠绕.9-11讲述小孩们玩打仗游戏,我和Mike互生情愫. 词汇：1) Harassment (9.4):骚扰Sex harassment2) Dress (10.3):包扎Administer : to give someone a medicine ormedical treatmentPainkillers were administered to the boy. 句子：1) There was a keen alarm when the cry came,a wire zinging through your whole body, afanatic feeling of devotion. (10.4-6)Keen: keen interest/desireThe need for enlarging our vocabulary is notkeenly felt yet.Zing: to move quicklyWire:电线Business wire?Fanatic:狂热的译：当他喊我的名字时,我会紧张万分,全身如触电一般,一种狂热的忠诚感油然而生.2) The game disintegrated, after a long while, in arguments and mass resurrection. (11.1-2) Disintegrate: to break up 散译：许久之后,大家吵个不休,装死的也活了过来,游戏就这样散了.12-14水井打好,Mike离去句子：1) One morning, of course, the job was all finished, the well capped, the pump reinstated, the fresh water marveled at. (12.1-2) Cap: (vt)加盖子Marvel at :惊叹译：不用说,一天早上,工作全部完成.井口上了盖子,水泵重新装好了,清新的井水引来一片赞叹.2) The laugh had a lonely boom in it, as if he were still down the well. (Last line, Para. 12) Boom:消沉而有回响的声音译：他的笑声深沉孤独,带着回音,似乎他还在井底一般.3) He had other jobs lined up elsewhere… (13.2) Line up:排队Line up please!Line the kids up !译：其他地方还有很多活等着他.4) Future absence I accepted^ it was just that I had no idea, until Mike disappeared, of what absence could be like. How my own territory would be altered, as if a landslide had gone through it and skimmed off all meaning exceptloss of Mike. (13. 5-8)译：我知道会分开的,也认了,但是到Mike 不见了,才知道那是一种什么样的别离.生活面目全非,好似一场山崩抹去了一切,除了失去Mike,其他都无意义了.15从细节描述对Mike的思念. 句子：1) My heart was beating in big thumps, likehowls happening in my chest.Thump:砰砰声16—18时间回到1979年,Sunny去接我.句子：1)…she looked not matronly but majestically girlish. (16.3-4)Matronly:主妇的译：她看上去不像是结了婚的人,而像是气质端庄的女孩子.19讲述与Sunny在温哥华相识的过程句子：1) Our pregnancies had dovetailed, so we had managed with one set of maternity clothes. (19.1-2)Dovetail: to fit together perfectly or to make two plans, ideas etc fit together perfectly 译：我们的怀孕期正好前后相接,所以我们可以共用一套孕妇服.2) In my kitchen or in hers …and our forgone ambitions. (19.2-6)Reel: stagger; feel dizzyStoke: fuelRampage: outbreak of violent or raging behavior译：我们大约每周都要在我的厨房或她的厨房聚会一次.孩子们总是不断打搅我们,有时我们还会由于睡眠缺乏而头晕目眩,于是就不断地喝咖啡、吸烟来提神,开始天南海北地聊大天,什么都谈：我们的婚姻和奋斗、彼此的缺点、既有趣又有些丢脸的动机、以及曾有过的理想抱负.做出丑事的有趣动机3) During that time of life that is supposed to bea reproductive daze - and The Cocktail Party〞.Daze: a confusing conditionSwamp: floodMaternal juices: mother s milk and other juices with which a mother feeds a baby Compel: to force someone to do something 译：那段时期,要带小孩喂奶水,一般女人都会有点不知所措的,但我们还是会一起聊西蒙-德-波伏娃和库斯特勒和艾略特的诗歌“鸡尾酒会〞.20-25两人相识之后的变化：都搬离温哥华.我婚姻出现问题,与丈夫分居,搬到多伦多.小孩来,住不习惯,还是回父亲那了. 句子：1) And I have moved for the newfangled reason …shame. (20.3-6) Newfangled: novel 新奇的Be parceled about: be dividedDeprivation: the lack of something that you need in order to be healthy, comfortable, or happy译：而我的搬离,原因也许有些离谱,非常人所能理解--丈夫、房子和结婚之后所有的一切(孩子除外,由我和丈夫轮流来带)都不要了,只希望过一种不虚伪、不丧失快乐、不令人羞耻的生活.2) I was happy with all this …from the house of marriage.(21.5-6)译：这一切都令我快乐,觉得自己有了真正的变化,开始迈上摆脱婚姻禁锢的漫漫征途.3) But it was too much to expect of my daughters- who were ten and twelve years old —that they should feel the same way.(21.6-8) 译：但不能期望我两个女儿 --一个十岁、一个12岁一和我的感觉一样.4)…I would be frightened, not of any hostility, but of a kind of nonexistence. (Last line, Para. 25) 译：我会感到害怕,不是怕不平安,而是那种自己好似不存在的感觉.26.我心情不好,给Sunny ,受邀去乡下过周末. 27-93在乡下度假,与Mike重逢所发生的一切,以及我对爱的感悟.修辞：Delicacy or disapproval (29.1)Happy energy (38.1)词汇：1) Tromp (30.2): tramp; to walk heavily and noisily2) Almost in the same breath (32.1):几乎异口同声3) Of all things (34.3):真没想到4) Nap (38.2): a short sleep, especially during the day: take/have a nap5) Civil engineer (41.2): 土木工程师civilconstruction 土木建筑6) pack up the game (45.3)收起游戏7) crap (45.5) garbage, rubbish, trash,junk8) Pilot star (45.2):领航星9) Big dipper (45.2):北斗七星10) Fold-out sofa (47.2):折叠沙发床11) Unmake the bed(47.3):叠被12) Make up the bed (47.3):铺床13) sleazy (49.2):不体面的句子：1) It was hard to make the break…(29.2)Break:断开,决裂译：和过去的生活决裂是很难的2) …I took my overnight bag … 译：我带上装着过夜用品的包3) Lying in the same sheets did not make for apeaceful night.(49.1)Make for: contribute to; lead to译：躺在Mike睡过的被褥里,我躁动不已.。

迪士尼世界：后现代的乌托邦城市1迪斯尼世界的本质是什么？这个答案多半体现在迪斯尼为游客创造幻觉的努力上，这一幻觉使游客觉得自己进入了一个更符合他们渴望的完美世界。

迪斯尼世界用各种各样的方式创造了这个完美世界。

例如，它鼓励游客以一个孩子的眼光去看待这个乐园，并把自己定义为一个“给生活带来梦想”的地方。

然而最根本的却是，它只是创造了一个完美世界的虚构版本。

在这个世界，迪斯尼引导游客逃脱来自现实生活中的束缚；在这个世界，游客不再受时间，距离，体积和现实法则的约束。

在五花八门的游乐区中，游客似乎脱离了人体以及人体的遗传基因；他们穿梭于过去与未来中，离开了地球。

在惊险的游乐项目中，他们不遵循万有引力定律，以一种不符常理的速度和方式移动着。

2迪斯尼世界还怂恿游客逃避社会和自我的堕落状态。

它创造了美国资本主义制度和政治历史的理想化幻象；它把游客拖入到永久庆典的世界中----一个满是游行队伍、焰火，盛装的表演者以及无尽的享乐诱惑的世界。

游客仿佛加入了一个永无止境的假期中，生活中的负面情绪也都被抛之脑后。

3显然，当你把所有这些都联系在一起，就可了解到，迪斯尼世界只是帮助游客以一种虚构的方式实现人类最大的梦想：超越。

在迪斯尼世界，我们超越了平凡。

它取代了我们自己所在的世界----在现实世界，多数机遇与我们擦肩而过，多数人隐藏自己的动机；而在迪斯尼，我们游历在象征世界：这个世界客观、具体，却似乎没有压力、无忧无虑，异常精彩，正如幻想一般。

4就是这样，迪斯尼摆脱了当代社会枯燥的“科学主义”世界观。

德国社会学家马克思韦伯曾经说过，在当今社会，随着科学地位的上升和宗教影响的减弱，我们正在见证世界的觉醒。

仿真文化的产物，例如迪斯尼世界，似乎正在随着一种新的承诺而重获魅力：利用太空飞行，外星人，时光穿梭和失落世界的各种神话，艺术和科技可以将我们的世界创造成最新版的当代爱情故事。

5但迪斯尼世界并不只提供客观化幻象。

借助仿真的力量，它也向我们展示了，科技是如何赋予我们不受世界控制的力量和自由的。

现代大学英语第六册paraphrase答案（整理版1,4,5,6,9,10,11）Lesson 1 How to get the poor off our conscience1.Virtue is ... self-centered.By right action, we mean it must help promote personal interest.2....(poverty) was a product of their excessive fecundity...The poverty of the poor was caused by their having too many children.3....the rich were not responsible for either its creation or its amelioration.The rich were not to blame for the existence of poverty so they should not be asked to undertake the task of solving the problem.4.It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.It is only the result or effect of the law of the survival of the fittest applied to nature of to human society.5. It declined in popularity, and references to its acquired a condemnatory tone.People began to reject Social Darwinism because it seemed to glorify brutal force and oppose treasured values of sympathy, love and friendship. Therefore, when it was mentioned, it was usually the target of criticism.6....the search for a way of getting the poor off our conscience was not at an end; it wasonly suspended.The desire to find a way to justify the unconcern for the poor had not been abandoned, it had only been put off.7. ...only rarely given to overpaying for monkey wrenches, flashlights, coffee makers, andtoilet seats.Government officials, on the whole, are good, it is very rare that some would pay high prices for office equipment to get kickbacks.8.This is perhaps our most highly influential piece of fiction.It is a very popular story and has been accepted by many but it is not true.9.Belief can be the servant of truth---but even more of convenience.Belief can be useful in the search for truth, but more often than not it is accepted because it is convenient and self-serving.10.George Gilder... Who tells too…the cruel spur of their own suffering to ensure effort...George Gilder advances the view that only when the poor suffer from great misery will they be stimulated to make great efforts to change the situation, in other words, suffering is necessary to force the poor to work hard.Lesson4 nettles1.How all my own territory would be altered, ad if a landslide had gone through it andskimmed off all meaning except loss of Mike.The impact of Mike's leaving on my life was beyond my imagination. I didn't expect that Mike's leaving would have such a tremendous power that it would change the meaning of my existence completely. All my thoughts were about loss of Mike.2.During that time of life that is supposed to be a reproductive daze, with the woman'smind all swamped by maternal juices, we were still compelledto discuss Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler and "The Cocktail Party".At that time, we were young mothers, and we were supposed to lead a terribly busy life full of confusion and bewilderment caused by giving birth to and raising babies. And our minds were supposed to be fully occupied by how to feed the babies and things like that. However, in the midst of all this we still felt the need to discuss some of the important thinkers of our time like Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler and T.S.Eliot's sophisticated work "The Cocktail Party".3....I would be frightened, not of any hostility but of a kind of nonexistence.I would be frightened, and my fear was not caused by my neighbor's visibly hostile and violentway of life, but by a kind of formless and hidden emptiness and meaninglessness of human existence. What happened around me was totally irrelevant to me, and I felt very isolated and alienated.4.She did not ask me---was it delicacy or disapproval?---about my new life.She did not ask me about my new life, either out of subtle consideration for my feeling about this sensitive subject or out of disapproval for my new life style.5.I t would be a sleazy thing to do, in the house of his friends.It would be a morally low thing, an indecent thing to commit infidelity in the house of a friend.6.I knew now that he was a person who had hit rock bottom.I knew that he was a person who had experienced the worst in life, the hardest experience aperson might have to endure.7.He and wife knew that together and it bound them, as something like that would eitherbreak you apart or bind you, for life.They experienced the worst together and they knew what it was like and understood the meaning of that experience. Such an experience posed the gravest test to people. If they stood the test, their friendship or marriage would be strengthened, and a sacred bondage would be formed between them. but if they failed the test, their relationship would be broken and they would flow on gently and8.Not risking a thing yet staying alive as a sweet trickle, an underground resource. Withthe weight of this now stillness on it, this seal.If they acted on love, they would take risks. They wouldn't do that or go further in their relationship, but they would rather let their love remain as a sweet trickle, which would flow on gently and...Lesson 5 The One Against the Many1. ....the national rejection of dogmatic preconceptions about the nature of the social andeconomic orderThere are such prejudices in an arrogant manner about the characteristic of the social order and economic order and they take it for granted. The country just rejected such prejudice.2. Nor can one suggest that Americans have been consistently vulnerability to secular ideology ever after No one can say that Americans have never been tempted by the approach of understanding, preserving or transforming the world according to rigid dogmas.3.and any intellect so shaped was ...ever afterA mind influenced by Calvinist theology would surely find it somewhat difficult to resist otherideological temptations to ideological thinking.4. Pragmatism is no more wholly devoid...experiencePragmatism is not completely free from abstract ideas just as ideology is not completely free from experience, that is to say, abstract ideas have a place in pragmatism just as experience hasa role in ideology.5. As an ideologist, however, Jefferson....historical curiosityAs a man following a fixed set of beliefs, Jefferson is only an interesting historical figure. His beliefs are out of date and are irrelevant to present-day reality.6....whose central dogma is confided to the custody of an infallible priesthoodTheir central beliefs are imprisoned by the whole body of priests who are always effective. 1....where free men may find partial truths, but where ...on Absolute TruthIn this universe a person whose mind is unconstrained may be able to discover relation truths but no man on earth can claim that he has already grasped the one and only truth.2.But ideology is a drug; no matter how ...it still persists.Ideology has the characteristic of a narcotic. In spite of the fact that it has been proved wrong many times by experience, people still long to commit themselves to ideology.3....the only certainty in an.....abuseThe only thing that is sure of a despotic system is the unrestricted exercise of power.10. The distinctive human triumph...lies in the capacity to understand the frailty of humanstriving ...nonethelessThe most outstanding achievement of humanity is they know that no matter how hard they try, they cannot achieve Absolute truth, yet they continue to make great efforts and refuse to give up.Lesson6 Death of a pig1. It is a tragedy enacted on most farms with ...The murder, being premeditated, is in thefirst degree...and the smoked bacon and ham provide...questionedThe tragedy has an ending---the killing of a pig and the serving of its meat. The killing deliberately planned and carried out efficiently, is the most type of murder. However, whether pigs should end their lives that way has never been questioned.2. A pig couldn't ask for anything better or none has, at any rateA pig could not ask for any better living conditions; at least no pig has ever complained. In aword, my pig lived in a pleasant environment3.You could see him down there at all hours, his white face parting ...his stethoscopedangling ...and grinning his corrosive grinFred was quite excited about the event. He was down at the pigpen all the time. Because of his swollen joints, he moved about unsteadily. His face set apart the grass along the fence as he moved about. He was like a doctor, with his long, drooping ears dangling like a stethoscope, and he scrabbled on the ground as if he were prescribing some medicine.4.When the enema bag appeared, and the bucket of warm suds, his happiness...full chargeof the irrigationWhen it was time to dose the pig, Fred became even more excited, and he managed to get through the fence, and acted as if he was taking charge of the medical treatment.5....and the premature expiration of a pig is...a sorrow in which it feels fully involvedIf a pig dies before he is supposed to, it is a serious matter for the whole community to remember. The whole community would share the sadness for his death.6.I have written this account in penitence and in grief, as a man who...and to explainmy...so many raised pigsThe purpose of this essay is to show that I am sorry for what has happened to my pig,since I have failed to raise the pig and cannot provide a reason why my pig could didn't grow the way other pigs have grown.7.The grave in the woods is unmarked, but ...and I know he and I...on flagless …ownchoosingThe pig's grave in the woods doesn't have a tombstone, but whenever somebody wants to visit it, Fred will show him the way.I know we will often visit it, separate or together, when we need to ponder over problems or when we are depressed.Lesson 9 The Bluest Eye1.Perhaps because they don’t have hometowns……and it never leaves them.This is perhaps because they only have places of birth, but no places where there feel at home and which they identify themselves with. But these girls are strongly influenced by their hometowns, and the influence stays with them forever even they leave their hometowns.2.Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away…they find it and fight it until it dies.The brown girls try hard to repress their emotions and passions. However, these natural human emotions cannot be wiped out totally. Sometimes they will emerge and burst out. And they will develop, become stronger and stay with them. So whenever and wherever this Funk bursts out, the brown girls will do their best to stifle it.3.As long as his needs were physical, she could meet them—comfort and satiety.If these needs were physical, she could meet them. She could make him comfortable and give him enough or even more than enough to satisfy his physical needs.4.She had seen this little girl all of her life.Geraldine had seen black girls like Pecola at many places and many times in the past.5.Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything.On the one hand, they (girls like Pecola) were ignorant and uncomprehending. They did not ask the question that why their lives were so miserable. On the other hand, as they were poverty-stricken and practically had nothing, their eyes revealed their desire for anything that could make their lives easier.6.The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.In the eyes of these girls one can see that they were in despair, without any hope for the future, and that their life was nothing but a waste.7.Th e girls grew up knowing nothing of girdles……the bills of their caps backward.As the girls were growing into young women, they had neverworn girdles to make their figure look slimmer, and thus more elegant; and when the boys grew up, they just began to wear their caps with the bills turned backward to indicate that they had become adults.Lesson 10 Notes on the English Character1.Saint George may caper on banners and……who delivers the goods.As Saint George is a hero, the person of arms, symbolizing chivalry, his image often appears on banners, and his name is often mentioned in the speeches of politicians. Saint George is used as a symbolic figure for political purposes. But John Bull is a tradesman and he delivers the goods we need in our daily life while making money at the same time.2.With its boarding-houses, its compulsory games……all proportion to itsnumbers.The English public schools have unique features. First, all boys live in boarding houses. Second, sports and games are organized and compulsory as part of the school curricular. Third, older students have special duties to help control younger students while the latter must do jobs for the former. Lastly, great emphasis is placed on good form and team spirit. These features enable the public school students to have disproportionately great influence.3.Note the word “bankrupt”……anxious to meet any liabilities.Pay attention to my use of the word “bankrupt”, a word related to business. This reveals my identity as a member of the commercial nation, who would be careful and sensible enough to avoid any risks of failing to pay their debts.4.But my friend spoke as an Oriental……but of kingly munificence andsplendor.But my friend expressed his views as a member of the Oriental countries. They are nourished by a tradition of great generosity and richness, which is different from the English tradition of middle-class prudence.5.True love in this differs from gold and clay……not to take away.In this aspect, true love is different from material things such as clay or even gold which can be divided and taken away. Yet, if we share true love, it will never diminish.6.I will now descend from that dizzy……my business of notetaking.In the above anecdote, I have become an example of the English man for the moment. That put men in a high position which makes me dizzy and its unfamiliar to me. I will now come down from that height and return to my role as your commentator on the characteristics of the English man.7.Such a combination is fruitful, and anyone who possesses it had gone a longway toward being brave.The Englishman’s nervous system acts promptly and feels slowly. The combination of the two qualities is useful, and anyone who has this combination is most likely to be brave.8.Since literature rests on national character……hidden spirits…we see.As literature is based on national character, there must be in the English nature hidden resources of passion that have produced the great romantic literature we see.9.“Oh, I’m used to Bernard Shaw; monkey tricks don’t hurt me.That kind of criticism is just like Bernard Shaw’s attacks. It is nothing new and I’m used to these tricks and jokes; they won’t do any harm to me.10.And the “tolerant humorous attitude”...bounded by the titter and the guffaw.The Englishmen think they have a tolerant and humorous attitude toward criticism.In fact it is not so, because their attitude is limited by uncomfortable laughter, which indicates that beneath the surface of their tolerant humorous attitude, they are uneasy. When they try to be humorous and brush aside criticism, they would titter and guffaw. Such uncomfortable laughter is a sign of uneasiness.11.The cats are all out of their bags, and diplomacy cannot recall them.I have already made all my opinions known to you. What is said is said, and beingdiplomatic cannot unsay what has been said.Lesson 11 Beauty1.The festival of marriage has……can see their glory.In wedding ceremony, time seems to go slowly so everybody, even a fool, could observe things clearly and see how wonderful they are.2.So I can make up my darling……in her girlhood.My daughter may feel she has missed something when she was young. If so, I wish I could make compensation to her now, before she is married.3.The glow of happiness has to cool……crystalli ze into memory.With the passing of time, you will feel a bit more detached from the happy event and then you can recall things more clearly and they will stick in your mind.4. A wedding gown will eventually grow ……seep out of the brightest day.The clothes made for the occasion of wedding, though kept in a box specially treated to repel moths, will have a moldy smell as time goes on; flowers will gradually lose their color and die and even the brightest day will grow dim.5.I feel certain that genuine bea uty……alone but out in the world.I firmly believe that true beauty is not shallow and it exists not because we think itexists but because it actually exists outside of us.6.Yet I persist in believing there is……this tingle than an evolutionary reflex.An evolutionary response cannot adequately explain why there is this physical feeling of excitement. There must be another more important reason—beauty.7.You cannot pursue the law of nature……without pumping into the beauty.If you try to study the law of nature, very soon you will encounter beauty. The study of the law of nature will inevitably lead to the discovery of beauty.8.Because the Creation puts……beauty is free and inexhaustible.Since the birth of the universe, everything in it has revealed its own wonder continuously. Unlike ordinary commodities which cost money and whose supply is limited, beauty is free and inexhaustible.9.Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us.When God created us, He also created beauty.10. I find in that infinity a profound source of meaning and hope.This close relationship makes us see life is meaningful and worth living. Human beings are exactly and wonderfully made for life on Earth. We are powerful. We can appreciate beauty. We have a bright future.。

Unit 4Nettles(Excerpts)Alice MunroAdditional Background Information(About the Author and her Short Story, “Nettles”)Regarded by many critics as one of the greatest living writers of short fiction in English literature, Alice Munro has often been compared to Chekhov.Born into a family of farmers in the small rural town of Wingham, Ontario, Munro began writing in her teens. She published her first story in 1950 when she was still a student at the University of Western Ontario. Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968. It received high acclaim and won that year’s Governor General’s Award, the most respected literary prize in Canada. Her next work was Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories published as a novel, which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. Her other books are all short story collections: Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974); Who Do You Think You Are? (1978, titled The Beggar Maid in English and American editions); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); The Progress of Love (1986); Friend of My Youth (1990); Open Secrets (1994); Selected Stories (1996); Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001); The View from Castle Rock (2006); Too Much Happiness (2009) and Dear Life (2012).“Nettles”, which first appeared in the New Yorker in 2000, is included in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. In this story, the author uses first-person narration. The plot of the story centers on a middle-aged woman’s 1979 reunion with a childhood male friend, but it moves back and forth between past and present. Like most other stories by Munro, the protagonist is a woman. The “I”in the story should not be taken as the author herself, although the subject matter of Munro’s stories is often developed from her own experiences. Munro has explained in various interviews that her stories are not autobiographical, but she does claim an “emotional reality”for her characters that is drawn from her own life.Munro’s life experiences of growing up in a relatively poor southwestern Ontario town during the depression, going through the rebelliousness and idealism of adolescence, discovering sex, leaving home, falling in love, getting married, having children, getting divorced, and being involved in a variety of complicated relationships, all inform the fiction she creates. “Nettles”is no exception. Her fictional world ranges across the breadth of Canada, but the stories that take place in Ontario are rooted in her own formative past, represent evocative settings experienced in childhood, and are recollected by a perceptive adult memory. In Lives of Girls and Women, Munro explains through a character what she hopes to achieve in writing a work of fiction about small-town Ontario life. The character works hard to portray not only what is actually “real”about the town, but what is meaningfully “true”. In order to do so, she must capture the dull and ordinary simplicity of her neighbors’daily lives. This character’s description of her efforts has often—andrightly—been used by critics to describe Munro’s own intentions as a writer: “What I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together—radiant, everlasting.”In “Nettles”, we see evidence of Munro’s realistic technique: details that have been arranged and illuminated memorably. “Nettles”is an example of the penetrating stories that led to Munro being lauded as one of the finest of living North American writers. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.Although nearly all of Alice Munro’s fiction is set in southwestern Ontario, her reputation as a brilliant short-story writer goes far beyond the borders of her native Canada. Her accessible, moving stories offer immediate pleasure while simultaneously exploring the complexity and beauty of everyday life. This aspect of her writing is also demonstrated in “Nettles”.Structure of the TextPart I (Paras.1-2)The beginning of the story tells us when and where the story takes place—in 1979, at the summer home of the narrator’s friend, Sunny, in Uxbridge, Ontario.Part II (Paras. 3-26)This section serves as a prelude to the main story.The first part is narrated as a flashback, devoted to the narrator’s childhood memories and her friendship with Mike. The setting of this part of the story is rural Ontario. (Paras. 3-15) The time and place shift to that of the first paragraph. In 1979, Sunny invites the narrator to spend a weekend with her family. (Paras. 16-18)The narration moves back a few years to the time when the narrator and Sunny were friends in Vancouver. (Para. 19)In Paragraph 20, the narration shifts back again to 1979. The narrator explains the different reasons that prompted both her and Sunny to leave Vancouver. The narrator’s marriage has turned out to be unsuccessful and she has problems with her children. This leads her to phone Sunny and obtain the invitation to spend the weekend. (Paras. 20-26)Part III (Paras. 27-93)The major part of the story takes place in this section.At Sunny’s home, to her surprise, the narrator meets her childhood friend, Mike. She is filled with happiness by this chance reunion. (Paras. 27-38)The narrator feels sexual desire for Mike, but refrains from expressing her desire. (Paras. 39-49)When everyone is invited to a brunch the next morning, the narrator decides to accompany Mike to a golf course instead. (Paras. 50-68)There is a fierce storm. After the storm, Mike tells the narrator about the death of his son and how it occurred, something he normally does not speak of. (Paras. 69-90)Part IV (Paras. 91-95)They return to Sunny’s home. At the end of the story, the narrator explains her new understandingof the meaning of love.Note: During the detailed study of the text, it might be useful to draw students’attention to the shifts in time mentioned above.Detailed Study of the Text1. Why does the author choose “Nettles”as the title of the story?nettle: any of a genus of annual and perennial weeds of the nettle family with stinging hairs that make the leaves rough. 荨麻The verb “nettle”can be used metaphorically to mean “to irritate or to annoy”. The phrase “grasp the nettle”means dealing with an unpleasant or painful situation firmly and without delay.Note: What is the meaning of the title “Nettles”? Let us bear this question in mind while we read the story. Usually, we can find the answer to such a question in the process of or after reading a story.2. What is the narrative structure of the story?The author begins her story in a rather unusual way, and the plot of her story does not follow the normal chronological order. The brief beginning paragraph takes place in 1979. But immediately after that, in the second paragraph, she switches to “years afterward”. Then from Paragraph 3 to Paragraph 15, the time shifts to her childhood, when she met and made friends with Mike. Beginning with Paragraph 16, the narrative returns to 1979. Sebastian Smee, an Australian Pulitzer Prize-winning arts critic, in reviewing the collection of Munro’s short stories which includes “Nettles”, points out, “What is perhaps most noticeable about her technique is the way her narratives rock back and forth in time. This allows her to infuse her stories with a sort of floating suspense, which falls halfway between the meandering spaciousness we are used to in novels and the soft-pedal epiphanies or shocking twists of more conventional short stories.”3. I walked into the kitchen of my friend Sunny’s house near Uxbridge, Ontario, and saw a man standing at the counter, making himself a ketchup sandwich. (Para. 1)counter: a long table or cabinet top for preparing or serving food in a kitchen, store, or lunchroom.a ketchup sandwich: 夹番茄酱的三明治To use ketchup as the filling of a sandwich is quite unusual. The narrator remembers this peculiar habit of Mike’s so she recognizes him at once even after many years.4. In the countryside where I lived as a child, wells would occasionally go dry in the summer. (Para. 3)With this sentence, the narrator’s memory turns to her childhood. The section from Paragraph 3 to Paragraph 15 is devoted to her childhood memories, her friendship with Mike. The descriptions of her childhood show that the narrator is very nostalgic.5. ... we needed a good supply of water for our penned animals (Para. 3)penned animals: 圈养的动物A pen is a small yard or enclosure for domestic animals. To pen is to confine or enclose in a pen.6. boarding houses (Para. 5)a private house where you pay to sleep and eat 供膳食的寄宿处7. ... who went to whatever school was at hand…(Para. 5)at hand: near in space or time哪个学校离家近他就上哪个学校。

震撼世界的审判约翰•司科普斯--------------------------------------------------------------------------------在一九二五年七月的那个酷热日子里，当我在挤得水泄不通的法庭里就位时，人群中响起一阵嘁嘁喳喳的议论声。

我的辩护人是著名刑事辩护律师克拉伦斯•达罗。

担任主控官的则是能说会道的演说家威廉•詹宁斯•布莱恩，他曾三次被民主党提名为美国总统候选人，而且还是导致我这次受审的基督教原教旨主义运动的领导人。

几个星期之前，我还只是田纳西州山区小镇戴顿的一名默默无闻的中学教员，而现在我却成了一次举世瞩目的庭审活动的当事人。

在法庭就座为我作证的有以哈佛大学的科特里•马瑟教授为首的十几位有名望的教授和科学家。

到场的还有一百多名新闻记者，甚至还有一些广播电台的播音员，他们也要破天荒地播放一次庭审实况。

就在我们静候着法庭开审的当儿，达罗关切地搂住我的肩膀低声安慰道：“别担心，孩子，我们会给他们点厉害瞧瞧。

”我刚到戴顿中学任自然科学教员兼足球教练不久，这件案子就突然降临到我的头上。

若干年来，原教旨主义者和现代主义者之间就一直在酝酿着一场冲突。

原教旨主义者坚持严格按照字面意义去理解《旧约全书》，而现代主义者则接受查尔斯•达尔文的进化论——认为一切动物，包括猿和人，都是由同一个祖先进化而来的。

在田纳西州，原教旨主义势力很强，州立法机构最近还通过了一项法令，禁止公开讲授“任何否定《圣经》上宣讲的创世说的理论。

”这项新法规的矛头直接指向了达尔文的进化论。

有位名叫乔治•拉普利亚的工程师因反对这项法规常和当地人进行辩论。

有一次辩论中，拉普利亚说，任何人要讲授生物学，就不能不讲进化论。

因为我就是讲授生物学的，所以他们便把我叫去作证。

“拉普利亚是对的，”我对他们说。

“那么说，你在触犯法律，”他们中的一位说。

“所有其他的教师也都在触犯法律，”我回答说。

“亨特所著的《生物学基础》中就讲到了进化论，那是我们使用的教科书。

Lesson 1 Sexism in Schoolcation is not a spectator sport. (p3)Education is something that all students should participate in.2.When students participate in classroom discussion they hold more positive attitudestoward school, and that positive attitudes enhance learning. (p3)When students participate in classroom discussion they are more inclined to think that going to school is useful, and the positive attitudes facilitate learning.3.It is no coincidence that girls are more passive in the classroom and score lower than boyson SATs. (p3)It is not surprising that the two things, namely, girls being more passive in the classroom and scoring lower than boys should be causally related.4.Most teachers claim that girls participate and are called on in class as often as boys. (p4)Most teachers state that girls participate and are asked to speak in class as often as boy.5.But a three-year study we recently completed found that this is not true; vocally, boys clearlydominate the classroom. (p4)Based on a three-year study, we found that this is not true; in terms of oral participation, boys clearly speak much more in classroom.6.When we showed teachers and administrators film of a classroom discussion and asked whowas talking more, the teachers overwhelmingly said the girls were. (p4)When we showed teachers and people responsible for the running of a school a video of a classroom discussion and asked who was talking more, the teachers almost all said the girls were.7.But in reality, the boys in the film were out-talking the girls at a ratio of three to one. (p4)But in reality, the boys in the video were talking more than the girls at a speed of three to one.8.Half of the classroom covered language arts and English-subjects in which girls traditionallyhave excelled; the other half covered math and science --- traditionally made domains. (p5) Half of the classroom covered the skills in using the language for effective communication and literary appreciation. And girls usually do better in these subjects. The other half covered math and science which traditionally belong to male field.9.Our research contradicted the traditional assumption that girls dominate classroomdiscussion in reading, while boys are dominant in math. (p7)Our research denied the truth of the traditional supposition that girls control classroom discussion in reading, while boys control the discussion in math.10.We found that whether the subject was language arts and English or math and science, boysgot more than their fair share of teacher attention. (p7)We found that whether the subject was skills in using the language for effective communication and English or math and science, boys got more teacher attention than is supposed to be fair.11.Some critics claim that if teachers talk more to male students, it is simply because boys aremore assertive in grabbing their attention --- a classic case of the squeaky wheel getting the educational oil. (p8)Some critics state firmly that if teachers talk more to male students, it is simply because boys are more aggressive in catching their attention --- a typical example of the notice ---arresting students getting more attention from the teacher.12.However, male assertiveness is not the whole answer. (p8)However, male’s mere assertive cannot completely answer the question.13.Girls are often shortchanged in quality as well as in quantity of teacher attention. (p10)Girls are often not given enough teacher attention what they deserve in quality as well as in quantity.14.Years of experience have shown that the best way to learn something is to do it yourself;classroom chivalry is not only misplaced, it is detrimental. (p13)Years of experience have shown that the best way to learn something is to do it yourself; “let me do for you” behavior is not only improper, it is harmful.15.During classroom discussion, teachers in our study reacted to boys’ answers with dynamic,precise and effective responses, while they often gave girls bland and diffuse reactions. (p13) During classroom discussion, teachers in our study reacted to boys’ answers with energetic, accurate and effective responses, while they often gave girls indifferent and general reactions.16.Despite caricatures of school as a harsh and punitive place, fewer than 5 percent of theteachers’ reactions were criticism, even of the mildest sort. (p15)Although school is often mockingly described as a place where students are badly treated and often punished.17.Too often, girls remain in the dark about the quality of their answers. (p18)Too often, girls are kept completely uninformed about the quality of their answers.18.Unfortunately, acceptance, the imprecise response packing the least educational punch,gets the most equitable sex distribution in classroom. (p18)It is unfortunate that the least useful kind of feedback is distributed between boys and girls most impartially, while the more useful kinds of feedback are heavily biased towards boys.Thus the overall result is that the feedback boys receive much more beneficial than that for girls.19.Active students receiving precise feedback are more likely to achieve academically. Andthey are more likely to be boys. (p18)Any active student who receives precise feedback can achieve more in his or her studies.And boys are more likely to be active and to receive such feedback, and so are more likely to succeed.20.By high school, some girls become less committed to careers, although their grades andachievement-test scores may be as good as boys’. (p20)By high school, some girls are not so devoted to the subject they have been studying, despite their academic study as good as boys’.21.Many girls’ interests turn to marriage or stereotypically female jobs. (p20)Many girls’ interests turn to marriage or jobs which are conventionally believed to be taken up by women only.22.The sexist communication game is played at work, as well as at school. (p23)The conversation among people which exhibits elements of sexism not exists in the field of work but also at school.23.Classes taught by these trained teachers had a higher level of intellectual discussi on andcontained more effective and precise teacher responses for all students. (p28)Classes taught by these trained teachers had a higher level of the discussion which is full of intelligence and contained more effective and accurate teacher responses for all students.Lesson 2 Philosophers among the Carrots1.I asked myself if it was still permissible to take pleasure in the profession of housewife andnot be a traitor to the cause. (p1)I was wondering whether it is possible for me to get pleasure by working as a housewifewhile at the same time still devoted to the Women’s Lib.2.I recalled Socrates saying that, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and decided thatmaybe it was time to examine mine. (p1)I remembered Socrates’saying that, “The life of few profound consideration and carefulchoice is not a meaningful one”, and decided that maybe it was time to look at my life very carefully to see if any lessons could be drawn from it or any changes needed to be made in it.3.If I hadn’t been to college, I wouldn’t have been that significant analogy, I thought smugly,depositing an orange pit in the sink as I finished the salad (or did I learn that in high school?).(p2)I feel proud of knowledge I have acquired from college which descend in scale. I splitted anorange pit into the kitchen sink after I had finished eating the salad. (If I didn’t learn that in high school, which part of the compulsory education was, I should not feel so indebted to Women’s Lib.)4.Then, as I eyed a bowl of cooked carrots speculatively, sizing them up for carrot cake ofmarinated vegetable salad and opting for the cake which I knew would be seconded by my husband and sons, (p3)Then, as I watched a bowl of cooked carrots thoughtfully, estimating whether they would be better for making salad, and deciding on the cake which I knew would be supported by my husband and three sons,5.I followed the train of my thoughts which was chugging off into philosophical realms led byArchimedes who said, “Any object placed in a fluid displaces its weight; an immersed object displaces its volume,” (p3)My thoughts, led by Archimedes, wandered away into the kingdom of philosophy. He said, “W hen an object floats on the liquid we can know its weight, which is equal to the weight of the liquid it has displaced; when an object immersed in the liquid we can know its volume which is equal to the volume of the liquid it has displaced.”6.Muttering, along with Emerson, that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”I dumped in a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce to make it come out right. (p3)Saying in a low voice, quoting from Emerson that “To observe a rule rigidly is an abominable quality of unintelligent people” I poured a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce to taste better.7.Buddha has his Bo tree, I have my refrigerator. (p4)Just as Buddha received heavenly inspiration to found Buddhism under the Bo tree, so I get new understanding about housewives and philosophy by gazing into the depth of the refrigerator.8.You can’t step twice in the same river. (p4)Please rest assured that what you are washing today is different from what you washedyesterday.9.I saw about me the variety in unity and unity in variety spoken of by my aestheticsprofessor. (p4)I saw the principle spoken by my aesthetics professor which means to see uniformity indifferences and see differences in uniformity. Applied to my case, “unity”means that all the clothes I had to wash were dirty clothes and “variety”means that every piece to be washed was different from every other piece.10.I indulged in aggressive fantasies against my dear family as I picked up a necktie draped ona lamp, a pair of tennis shoes under the couch, a cache of peanut shells beneath anewspaper and remembering William James’ comment that “Even a pig has a philosophy,”I wondered angrily what theirs was. (p5)I allowed myself to develop a lot of hostile and angry thoughts against my dear husbandand three sons when I picked up a tie draped on a lamp, a pair of tennis shoes under the couch, a secret store of peanut shells beneath a newspaper and remembering William James’ comment that “Even a pig has an attitude to life.” So I wondered since they were like pigs, they must have had one too. (Anyone may find an excuse for their behavior.) 11.……with a wave of willfulness (p6)……with a sudden burst of determination to go my own way12.In my present state of mind I found this the quintessence of good sense and I walked out ofhouse and into the car, leaving the breakfast dishes on the table. (p6)In my present mood, I found this the best representation of human wisdom.13.I smiled enigmatically as I continued to stir the chicken soup and quoted Alexander Pope,“All chaos is but order misunderstood,” then added with composure that I had purchase a new dress. (p7)I smiled in a way which showed there was something secret about her when I continued tostir the chicken soup and quoted Alexander Pope, “All chaos is in fact not chaos, but is order which has been mistaken for chaos.”14.But, without becoming the least bit ruffled, I replied, in the words of Pascal, “Ah, but theheart has its reasons the mind knows not of.” (p8)……sometimes you do something out of emotion which is not based on any reason.15.Whatever is, is good. (p9)Reality is good. It is good, because everything is created by God.Lesson 3 The Power of Habit1.Habit is a second nature! Habit is ten times nature. (p1)Habit is a second born quality. It is so deeply fixed that you simply follow your habit without thinking.2.…… the degree to which this is true no one probably can appreciate as well as one who is aveteran soldier himself. (p1)Only the experienced soldier can best recognize the truth of the duke’s statement.3.The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again, asto most of the possibilities of his conduct. (p1)It takes many years of daily training of mind and qualities to create a completely new person, as far as his possible patterns of behavior are connected.4. a practical joke (p2)sb. who plays a trick on sb. else so as to make the victim foolish5.The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man’s nervousstructure. (p2)The training had completed in any way, and it s effects had become a part of man’s nervous system.6.Rider less cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and go throughtheir customary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call. (p3)Without a rider, soldier who fight on horseback at many battles, have been to gather together and take part in their habitual drills as soon as they heard sound of trumpet.7.Most domestic beasts seem machines almost pure and simple, undoubting, unhesitatinglydoing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. (p3)Most beasts raised at home are completely like machines, and no doubt, never hesitate to do the duties they have been taught all the time and give no indication that they have never come up with other options.8.…… by his new responsibilities, (p4)…… things he had to face or manage in the new environment,9.Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. (p4)Habit is a regulating force that maintains established order of society and prev ents any sudden change in it.10.It alone is what keeps up all with the bounds of ordinance. (p4)It keeps us all in the different professional, geographical, or social positions designated to us by law or fate.11.It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by thosebrought up to tread therein. (p4)Because of habit, those who have been trained to work in that place since their childhood will not give up those most difficult and unpleasant occupation.12.It protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. (p4)It makes the natives of the desert and the frozen zone stay in their own place because of habit.13.It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nature or our early choice,and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. (p4)Habit determines that one will stay and work hard till the end of life in a disagreeable occupation which he was brought to follow or chose early in our life, and try to accept and manage it as well as he can. Because there is no other choice for which we are suitable, and it is too late to begin again.14.Although at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down onthe young commercial traveler. (p4)By age 25, your future career has been settled down and you have formed peculiar habits in work.15.You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, theprejudices, the ways of the “shop”, in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no moreescape than his coat sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. (p4)You get the general idea of the traits of one’s personality, the particular way of thinking, the personal preference, the ways in which one does one’s business, they are all fixed habits. Therefore, the man cannot escape his old habits he has acquired just as his coat sleeve cannot suddenly fall into a new set of folds which has been ironed into it.16.It is best he should not escape. (p4)It is most desirable he should not eacape.17.Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent;If one learns a language after the age of twenty, he will almost never sound like a native speaker, but only like a foreigner;18.Hardly, ever can a youth transformed to the society of his betters unclean and nasality andother vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. (p5)Any young man who has been promoted to a higher social position may learn to give up his nasal accents and other bad habits that have been brought up in him by his early education.19.An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arranged this year ashe was the last; and how his better-clad acquaintances continue to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. (p5)A person’s old habits, as powerful as gravity, make him to take control over his behaviors…20.It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the found.(p6)The calculation of good habits formed is just like the investment of money in a project, if you can form a good habit in your early years, you can benefit a lot from them and enjoy the comfortable life in the future.21.The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody ofautomatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. (p6)Most of the trivial items in our life can become a habit and can be taken of our conscious mind which therefore can be used for more important task.22.Full half the time of such a man goes to deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought tobe so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. (p6)Such man spends not less than half of his time deciding or regretting which should be deeply fixed and really should not all matters for his conscious thinking at all.Lesson 4 The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen1.They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue. (p1)They hardly ever spoke during the meal, and when they did speak, they spoke in a way that the author cannot understand what they are talking about.2.Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance, buther own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to any in the world except herself and her companion. (p1)Sometimes the pretty girl who sat near window over there gave them a casual glance, but she was so much troubled by her own problem that she couldn’t pay any attentions to others but to herself and her fiancé.3.…… petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way of speaking--- perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which she not long ago left. (p2)……her face was small, delicate, and clean, and was as oval-shaped as a miniature, representing the typical feminine face admired as perfect by Regency time, though she spoke in a firm, commanding tone and an upper-class manner, typical of those who had been educated at a highly prestigious school for upper-class young women, which she graduated not long ago.4.Her companion appeared a little distraught. (p4)Her partner seemed somewhat worried or upset about what to do next.5.I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. (p5)I could see them to be two small portraits hanging side by side as decorations for thesurface of a wall.6.He should have been a young officer in Nelson’s navy in the days when a certain weaknessand sensitivity were no bar to promotion. (p5)He should have had an easy access to promotion in Nelson’s navy despite some weakness and sensitivities as he had some feminine features which would be admired by people then.7.She deserved a better life. (p6)She could have enjoyed an easier life than toiling as a novelist.8.You know you don’t get on with him. This way we shall be quite independent. (p8)You know you don’t have a good relationship with your uncle. If we do as I have said we shall be quite independent.9.My mother says that writing is a good crutch… (p13)She disapproves of writing as the main thing (a career), but though writing is good only as an auxiliary support.10.a pretty solid crutch (p14)If you should think writing is support, I would argue that it is a pretty solid support. It can be the main source of a living.11.I see what you mean. (p26)I understand what you are trying to say.12.I was on the side of his mother. It was a humiliating thought, but I was probably about hermother’s age. (p26)I agreed with his mother that writing should not be a career, but only a support. Althoughknowing oneself to be old would cause discomfort and embarrassment, I was actually about her mother’s age and therefore quite in a position to advise her and her future. 13.……“the long defeat of doing nothing well” (p27)……“the frustration of being unable to write anything good for many years”14.……, by performance and not by promise. (p27)……, by what you have actually written, not by any indication of potential success in you. 15.I didn’t know you’d ever been there. (p29)The polite way of saying “I know you have never been there (so how can you write about a place you don’t know?)16.A fresh eye’s terribly important. (p30)It’s all good to see something new.17.Perhaps, we’d go better to marry when you come back. (p37)It will be more sensible of us to get married when you come back.18.……couldn’t you observe a bit more near home? Here in London. (p47)…… why go off to St. Tropez? Couldn’t you write something about here, about London?19.Darling, you’re awfully decorative, but sometimes --- well, you simply don’t connect. (p51)You look awfully good. (If we go out together, I can feel proud of being accompanied by such a handsome young man.) But you haven’t got intelligence, you absolutely don’t connect one meaning to author.20.…… bowed to each other, as though they were blocked in doorway. (p54)…… yielded apologetically to each other in such a manner as if they have dumped into each other in a doorway, as one was going out and the other coming in21.I had thought the two young people matching miniatures, but what a contrast in fact therewas. The same type of prettiness could contain weakness and strengthens. (p55)I had wrongly believed that the two young people were a good match for their looks. Butnow I saw they were so different in nature. The same pretty looks could mean a weak character in some people, but a strong character in others.22.Her Regency counterpart, I suppose, would have borne a dozen children without the aid ofanesthetics, while he would have fallen an easy victim to the first dark eyes in Naples.(p55)If she had lived in Regency time, she would have been able to give birth to a dozen children without the use of anesthetics. However, if he had been a young officer in Nelson’s navy and had called at the port of Naples, he would easily have been secured by the first Italian woman he met after setting foot ashore.23.I didn’t like to think of her as the Mrs. Humphrey Ward of her generation --- not that Iwould live so long. (p55)I dreaded the thought of her becoming a well-established writer. This was not because Iwould live so long as to see her become another Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the Mrs. Humphrey Ward of her time. But this was because I was deeply aware that the further she went alonga writer’s road, the more severely she was sure to suffer.24.Old ages saves us from the realization of a great many fears. (p55)Being old enable we to avoid seeing many unpleasant things happen. Because we are old, we will not live to see a great many things we fear actually happen.25.……, and she didn’t look like Mrs. Humphrey Ward. (p55)……, Mrs. Humphrey Ward looked plain, while she looked pretty, and her photo on the back of the jacket would help make the book well received by reviewers as well as readers. 26.Sometimes you are so evasive I think you don’t want to marry me at all. (p57)evasive: deliberately avoiding the major topic of getting married。

第四课第四课外婆的日用家当艾丽斯?沃克尔我就在这院子里等候她的到来。

我和麦姬昨天下午已将院子打扫得干干净净，地面上还留着清晰的扫帚扫出的波浪形痕迹。

这样的院子比一般人想象的要舒适，它不仅仅是一个院子，简直就像一间扩大了的客厅。

当院子的泥土地面被打扫得像屋里的地板一样干净，四周边缘的细沙面上布满不规则的细纹时，任何人都可以进来坐一下，一边抬头仰望院中的榆树，一边等着享受从来吹不进屋内的微风。

麦姬在她姐姐离去之前将会一直心神不定：她将会神情沮丧地站在角落里，一面为自己的丑陋面孔和胳膊大腿上晒出的累累疤痕而自惭形秽，一面怀着既羡慕又敬畏的心情怯生生地看着她姐姐。

她觉得她姐姐真正是生活的主人，想要什么便能得到什么，世界还没有学会对她说半个“不”字。

你一定从电视片上看到过“闯出了江山”的儿女突然出乎意料地出现在那跌跌撞撞从后台走出来的父母面前的场面。

(当然，那场面必定是令人喜悦的：假如电视上的父母和儿女之间相互攻击辱骂，他们该怎么样呢?) 在电视上，母亲和儿女见面总是相互拥抱和微笑。

有时父母会痛哭流涕，而那发迹了的孩子就会紧紧地拥抱他们，并隔着桌子伸过头来告诉他们说若没有他们的帮助，她自己就不会有今日的成就。

我自己就看过这样的电视节目。

有时候我在梦里梦见迪伊和我突然成了这种电视节目的剧中人。

我从一辆黑色软座垫大轿车上一下来，立刻被人引进一间宽敞明亮的屋子里。

屋里有许多人，其中一个身材高大威武，满面微笑，有点像著名电视节目主持人约翰尼?卡森的美男子迎上来和我握手，并对我说我养了个好女儿。

然后，我们来到台前，迪伊热泪盈眶地拥抱着我，还把一朵大大的兰花别在我的衣服上，尽管她曾对我说过兰花是很低级的花。

在现实生活中，我是一个大块头、大骨架的妇女，有着干男人活儿的粗糙双手。

冬天睡觉时我穿着绒布睡衣，白天身穿套头工作衫。

我能像男人一样狠狠地宰猪并收拾干净。

我身上的脂肪使我在寒冬也能保暖。

我能整天在户外干活儿，敲碎冰块，取水洗衣。

高级英语Nettles课后答案Unit 4Nettles(Excerpts)Alice MunroAdditional Background Information(About the Author and her Short Story, “Nettles”)Regarded by many critics as one of the greatest living writers of short fiction in English literature, Alice Munro has often been compared to Chekhov.Born into a family of farmers in the small rural town of Wingham, Ontario, Munro began writing in her teens. She published her first story in 1950 when she was still a student at the University of Western Ontario. Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968. It received high acclaim and won that year’s Governor General’s Award, the most respected literary prize in Canada. Her next work was Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories published as a novel, which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. Her other books are all short story collections: Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974); Who Do You Think You Are? (1978, titled The Beggar Maid in English and American editions); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); The Progress of Love (1986); Friend of My Youth (1990); Open Secrets (1994); Selected Stories (1996); Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001); The View from Castle Rock (2006); Too Much Happiness (2009) and Dear Life (2012).“Nettles”, which first appeared in the New Yorker in 2000,is included in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. In this story, the author uses first-person narration. The plot of the story centers on a middle-aged woman’s 1979 reunion with a childhood male friend, but it moves back and forth between past and present. Like most other stories by Munro, the protagonist is a woman. The “I”in the story should not be taken as the author herself, although the subject matter of Munro’s stories is often developed from her own experiences. Munro has explained in various interviews that her stories are not autobiogr aphical, but she does claim an “emotional reality”for her characters that is drawn from her own life.Munro’s life experiences of growing up in a relatively poor southwestern Ontario town during the depression, going through the rebelliousness and idealism of adolescence, discovering sex, leaving home, falling in love, getting married, having children, getting divorced, and being involved in a variety of complicated relationships, all inform the fiction she creates. “Nettles”is no exception. Her fictional w orld ranges across the breadth of Canada, but the stories that take place in Ontario are rooted in her own formative past, represent evocative settings experienced in childhood, and are recollected by a perceptive adult memory. In Lives of Girls and Women, Munro explains through a character what she hopes to achieve in writing a work of fiction about small-town Ontario life. The character works hard to portray not only what is actually “real”about the town, but what is meaningfully “true”. In order to do so, she must capture the dull and ordinary simplicity of her neighbors’daily lives. This character’s description of her efforts has often—and rightly—been used by critics to describe Munro’s own intentions as a writer: “What I wanted was every last thing, ev erylayer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together—radiant, everlasting.”In “Nettles”, we see evidence of Munro’s realistic technique: details that have been arranged and illuminated memorably. “Nettles”is an example of the penetrating stories that led to Munro being lauded as one of the finest of living North American writers. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.Although nearly all of Alice Munro’s fiction is set in southwestern Ontario, her reputation as a brilliant short-story writer goes far beyond the borders of her native Canada. Her accessible, moving stories offer immediate pleasure while simultaneously exploring the complexity and beauty of everyday life. This aspect of her writing is also demonstrated in “Nettles”.Structure of the TextPart I (Paras.1-2)The beginning of the story tells us when and where the story takes place—in 1979, at the summer home of the narrator’s friend, Sunny, in Uxbridge, Ontario.Part II (Paras. 3-26)This section serves as a prelude to the main story.The first part is narrated as a flashback, devoted to the narrator’s childhood memories and her friendship with Mike. The setting of this part of the story is rural Ontario. (Paras. 3-15) The time and place shift to that of the first paragraph. In 1979, Sunny invites the narrator to spend a weekend with her family. (Paras. 16-18)The narration moves back a few years to the time when the narrator and Sunny were friends in Vancouver. (Para. 19) In Paragraph 20, the narration shifts back again to 1979. Thenarrator explains the different reasons that prompted both her and Sunny to leave Vancouver. The narrator’s marriage has turned out to be unsuccessful and she has problems with her children. This leads her to phone Sunny and obtain the invitation to spend the weekend. (Paras. 20-26)Part III (Paras. 27-93)The major part of the story takes place in this section.At Sunny’s home, to her surprise, the narrator meets her childhood friend, Mike. She is filled with happiness by this chance reunion. (Paras. 27-38)The narrator feels sexual desire for Mike, but refrains from expressing her desire. (Paras. 39-49)When everyone is invited to a brunch the next morning, the narrator decides to accompany Mike to a golf course instead. (Paras. 50-68)There is a fierce storm. After the storm, Mike tells the narrator about the death of his son and how it occurred, something he normally does not speak of. (Paras. 69-90)Part IV (Paras. 91-95)They return to Sunny’s home. At the end of the story, the narrator explains her new understandingof the meaning of love.Note: During the detailed study of the text, it might be useful to draw students’attention to the shifts in time mentioned above.Detailed Study of the Text1. Why does the author choose “Nettles”as the title of the story?nettle: any of a genus of annual and perennial weeds of the nettle family with stinging hairs that make the leaves rough. 荨麻The verb “nettle”can be used metaphorically to mean “to irritate or to annoy”. The phrase “grasp the nettle”means dealing with an unpleasant or painful situation firmly and without delay.Note: What is the meaning of the title “Nettles”? Let us bear this question in mind while we read the story. Usually, we can find the answer to such a question in the process of or after reading a story.2. What is the narrative structure of the story?The author begins her story in a rather unusual way, and the plot of her story does not follow the normal chronological order. The brief beginning paragraph takes place in 1979. But immediately after that, in the second paragraph, she switches to “years afterward”. Then from Paragraph 3 to Paragraph 15, the time shifts to her childhood, when she met and made friends with Mike. Beginning with Paragraph 16, the narrative returns to 1979. Sebastian Smee, an Australian Pulitzer Prize-winning arts critic, in reviewing the collection of Munro’s short stories which includes “Nettles”, points out, “What is perhaps most no ticeable about her technique is the way her narratives rock back and forth in time. This allows her to infuse her stories with a sort of floating suspense, which falls halfway between the meandering spaciousness we are used to in novels and the soft-pedal epiphanies or shocking twists of more conventional short stories.”3. I walked into the kitchen of my friend Sunny’s house near Uxbridge, Ontario, and saw a man standing at the counter, making himself a ketchup sandwich. (Para. 1)counter: a long table or cabinet top for preparing or serving food in a kitchen, store, or lunchroom.a ketchup sandwich: 夹番茄酱的三明治To use ketchup as thefilling of a sandwich is quite unusual. The narrator remembers this peculiar habit of Mike’s so she recognizes him at once even after many years.4. In the countryside where I lived as a child, wells would occasionally go dry in the summer. (Para. 3)With this sentence, the narrator’s memory turns to her childhood. The section from Paragraph 3 to Paragraph 15 is devoted to her childhood memories, her friendship with Mike. The descriptions of her childhood show that the narrator is very nostalgic.5. ... we needed a good supply of water for our penned animals (Para. 3)penned animals: 圈养的动物A pen is a small yard or enclosure for domestic animals. To pen is to confine or enclose in a pen.6. boarding houses (Para. 5)a private house where you pay to sleep and eat 供膳食的寄宿处7. ... who went to whatever school was at hand…(Para. 5)at hand: near in space or time哪个学校离家近他就上哪个学校。

Lesson 1 Sexism in School1. Education is not a spectator sport. (p3）Education is something that all students should participate in。

2. When students participate in classroom discussion they hold more positive attitudestoward school，and that positive attitudes enhance learning。

(p3)When students participate in classroom discussion they are more inclined to think that going to school is useful，and the positive attitudes facilitate learning。

3. It is no coincidence that girls are more passive in the classroom and score lower thanboys on SATs. (p3）It is not surprising that the two things，namely, girls being more passive in the classroom and scoring lower than boys should be causally related。

4. Most teachers claim that girls participate and are called on in class as often as boys.(p4)Most teachers state that girls participate and are asked to speak in class as often as boy。

Lesson 1 Sexism in School1. Education is not a spectator sport. (p3)Education is something that all students should participate in.2. When students participate in classroom discussion they hold more positive attitudestoward school, and that positive attitudes enhance learning。

(p3)When students participate in classroom discussion they are more inclined to think that going to school is useful，and the positive attitudes facilitate learning.3. It is no coincidence that girls are more passive in the classroom and score lower thanboys on SATs. (p3)It is not surprising that the two things, namely, girls being more passive in the classroom and scoring lower than boys should be causally related.4. Most teachers claim that girls participate and are called on in class as often as boys。

(p4)Most teachers state that girls participate and are asked to speak in class as often as boy.5. But a three—year study we recently completed found that this is not true; vocally，boys clearly dominate the classroom. (p4)Based on a three-year study，we found that this is not true; in terms of oral participation, boys clearly speak much more in classroom。

大学高级英语第六册课文Paraphrase自整理版本Lesson 1 Sexism in School1. Education is not a spectator sport. (p3)Education is something that all students should participate in.2. When students participate in classroom discussion they hold more positive attitudestoward school, and that positive attitudes enhance learning. (p3)When students participate in classroom discussion they are more inclined to think that going to school is useful, and the positive attitudes facilitate learning.3. It is no coincidence that girls are more passive in the classroom and score lower thanboys on SATs. (p3)It is not surprising that the two things, namely, girls being more passive in the classroom and scoring lower than boys should be causally related.4. Most teachers claim that girls participate and are called on in class as often as boys.(p4)Most teachers state that girls participate and are asked to speak in class as often as boy.5. But a three-year study we recently completed found that this is not true; vocally, boysclearly dominate the classroom. (p4)Based on a three-year study, we found that this is not true; in terms of oral participation, boys clearly speak much more in classroom.6. When we showed teachers and administrators film of a classroom discussion andasked who was talking more, the teachers overwhelmingly said the girls were. (p4) When we showed teachers and people responsible for the running of a school a video of a classroom discussion and asked who was talking more, the teachers almost all said the girls were.7. But in reality, the boys in the film were out-talking the girls at a ratio of three to one.(p4)But in reality, the boys in the video were talking more than the girls at a speed of three to one.8. Half of the classroom covered language arts and English-subjects in which girlstraditionally have excelled; the other half covered math and science --- traditionally made domains. (p5)Half of the classroom covered the skills in using the language for effective communication and literary appreciation. And girls usually do better in these subjects.The other half covered math and science which traditionally belong to male field.9. Our research contradicted the traditional assumption that girls dominate classroomdiscussion in reading, while boys are dominant in math. (p7) Our research denied the truth of the traditional supposition that girls control classroom discussion in reading, while boys control the discussion in math.10. We found that whether the subject was language arts and English or math andscience, boys got more than their fair share of teacherattention. (p7)We found that whether the subject was skills in using the language for effective communication and English or math and science, boys got more teacher attention than is supposed to be fair.11. Some critics claim that if teachers talk more to male students, it is simply becauseboys are more assertive in grabbing their attention --- a classic case of the squeaky wheel getting the educational oil. (p8) Some critics state firmly that if teachers talk more to male students, it is simply because boys are more aggressive in catching their attention --- a typical example of the notice --- arresting students getting more attention from the teacher.12. However, male assertiveness is not the whole answer. (p8)However, male’s mere assertive cannot completely answer th e question.13. Girls are often shortchanged in quality as well as in quantity of teacher attention. (p10)Girls are often not given enough teacher attention what they deserve in quality as well as in quantity.14. Years of experience have shown that the best way to learn something is to do ityourself; classroom chivalry is not only misplaced, it is detrimental. (p13)Years of experience have shown that the best way to learn something is to do it yourself; “let me do for you” behavior is not only improper, it is h armful.15. During classroom discussion, teachers in our study reacted to boys’ answers withdynamic, precise and effective responses, while they oftengave girls bland and diffuse reactions. (p13)During classroom discussion, teachers in our study reacted to boys’ answers with energetic, accurate and effective responses, while they often gave girls indifferent and general reactions.16. Despite caricatures of school as a harsh and punitive place, fewer than 5 percent ofthe teachers’ reactions were criticism, even of the mildest sort. (p15)Although school is often mockingly described as a place where students are badly treated and often punished.17. Too often, girls remain in the dark about the quality of their answers. (p18)Too often, girls are kept completely uninformed about the quality of their answers. 18. Unfortunately, acceptance, the imprecise response packing the least educationalpunch, gets the most equitable sex distribution in classroom. (p18)It is unfortunate that the least useful kind of feedback is distributed between boys and girls most impartially, while the more useful kinds of feedback are heavily biased towards boys. Thus the overall result is that the feedback boys receive much more beneficial than that for girls.19. Active students receiving precise feedback are more likely to achieve academically.And they are more likely to be boys. (p18)Any active student who receives precise feedback can achieve more in his or her studies. And boys are more likely to be active and to receive such feedback, and so are more likely to succeed.20. By high school, some girls become less committed to careers, although their gradesand achievement-test scores may be as good as boys’. (p20) By high school, some girls are not so devoted to the subject they have been studying, despite their academic study as good as boys’.21. Many girls’ interests t urn to marriage or stereotypically female jobs. (p20)Many girls’ interests turn to marriage or jobs which are conventionally believed to be taken up by women only.22. The sexist communication game is played at work, as well as at school. (p23)The conversation among people which exhibits elements of sexism not exists in the field of work but also at school.23. Classes taught by these trained teachers had a higher level of intellectual discussionand contained more effective and precise teacher responses for all students. (p28) Classes taught by these trained teachers had a higher level of the discussion which is full of intelligence and contained more effective and accurate teacher responses for all students.Lesson 2 Philosophers among the Carrots1. I asked myself if it was still permissible to take pleasure in the profession of housewifeand not be a traitor to the cause. (p1)I was wondering whether it is possible for me to get pleasure by working as ahousewife while at the same time still devoted to the Women’s Lib.2. I recalled Socrates saying that, “The unexamined life isnot worth living,” and decidedthat maybe it was time to examine mine. (p1)I remembered Socrates’ saying that, “The life of few profound consideration andcareful choice is not a meaningful one”, and decided that maybe it was time to look at my life very carefully to see if any lessons could be drawn from it or any changes needed to be made in it.3. If I hadn’t been to college, I wouldn’t have been that significant analogy, I thoughtsmugly, depositing an orange pit in the sink as I finished the salad (or did I learn that in high school?). (p2)I feel proud of knowledge I have acquired from college which descend in scale. Isplitted an orange pit into the kitchen sink after I had finished eating the salad. (If I didn’t learn that in high school, which part of the compulsory education was, I should not feel so indebted to Women’s Lib.)4. Then, as I eyed a bowl of cooked carrots speculatively, sizing them up for carrot cakeof marinated vegetable salad and opting for the cake which I knew would be seconded by my husband and sons, (p3)Then, as I watched a bowl of cooked carrots thoughtfully, estimating whether they would be better for making salad, and deciding on the cake which I knew would be supported by my husband and three sons,5. I followed the train of my thoughts which was chugging off into philosophical realmsled by Archimedes who said, “Any object placed in a fluid displace s its weight; an immersed object displaces its volume,”(p3)My thoughts, led by Archimedes, wandered away into the kingdom of philosophy. He said, “When an object floats on the liquid we can know its weight, which is equal to the weight of the liquid it has displaced; when an object immersed in the liquid we can know its volume which is equal to the volume of the liquid it has displaced.”6. Muttering, along with Emerson, that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of littleminds…” I dumped in a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce to make it come out right.(p3)Saying in a low voice, quoting from Emerson that “T o observe a rule rigidly is anabominable quality of unintelligent people” I poured a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce to taste better.7. Buddha has his Bo tree, I have my refrigerator. (p4)Just as Buddha received heavenly inspiration to found Buddhism under the Bo tree, so I get new understanding about housewives and philosophy by gazing into the depth of the refrigerator.8. You can’t step twice in the same river. (p4)Please rest assured that what you are washing today is different from what you washed yesterday.9. I saw about me the variety in unity and unity in variety spoken of by my aestheticsprofessor. (p4)I saw the principle spoken by my aesthetics professor which means to see uniformityin differences and see differences in uniformity. Applied tomy case, “unity” means that all the clothes I had to wash were dirty clothes and “variety” means that every piece to be washed was different from every other piece.10. I indulged in aggressive fantasies against my dear family as I picked up a necktiedraped on a lamp, a pair of tennis shoes under the couch, a cache of peanut shells beneath a newspaper and remembering William James’ comment that “Even a pig ha s a philosophy,”I wondered angrily what theirs was. (p5)I allowed myself to develop a lot of hostile and angry thoughts against my dearhusband and three sons when I picked up a tie draped on a lamp, a pair of tennis shoes under the couch, a secret store of peanut shells beneath a newspaper and remembering William James’ comment that “Even a pig has an attitude to life.” So I wondered since they were like pigs, they must have had one too. (Anyone may find an excuse for their behavior.)11. ……with a wave of wi llfulness (p6)……with a s udden burst of determination to go my own way12. In my present state of mind I found this the quintessence of good sense and I walkedout of house and into the car, leaving the breakfast dishes on the table. (p6)In my present mood, I found this the best representation of human wisdom.13. I smiled enigmatically as I continued to stir the chicken soup and quoted AlexanderPope, “All chaos is but order misunderstood,” then added with composure that I had purchase a new dress. (p7)I smiled in a way which showed there was something secretabout her when Icontinued to stir the chicken soup and quoted Alexander Pope, “All chaos is in fact not chaos, but is order which has been mistaken for chaos.”14. But, without becoming the least bit ruffled, I replied, in the words of Pascal, “Ah, butthe heart has its reasons the mind knows not of.” (p8)……sometimes you do something out of emotion which is not based on any reason. 15. Whatever is, is good. (p9)Reality is good. It is good, because everything is created by God.Lesson 3 The Power of Habit1. Habit is a second nature! Habit is ten times nature. (p1)Habit is a second born quality. It is so deeply fixed that you simply follow your habit without thinking.2. …… the degree to which this is true no one prob ably can appreciate as well as onewho is a veteran soldier himself. (p1)Only the experienced soldier can best recognize the truth of the duke’s statement.3. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioninga man completely overagain, as to most of the possibilities of his conduct. (p1)It takes many years of daily training of mind and qualities to create a completely new person, as far as his possible patterns of behavior are connected.4. a practical joke (p2)sb. who plays a trick on sb. else so as to make the victim foolish5. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had becomeembodied in the man’snervous structure. (p2)The training had completed in any way, and its effects had become a part of man’s nervous system.6. Rider less cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and gothrough their customary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call. (p3)Without a rider, soldier who fight on horseback at many battles, have been to gather together and take part in their habitual drills as soon as they heard sound of trumpet.7. Most domestic beasts seem machines almost pure and simple, undoubting,unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. (p3) Most beasts raised at home are completely like machines, and no doubt, never hesitate to do the duties they have been taught all the time and give no indication that they have never come up with other options.8. …… by his new responsibilities, (p4)…… things he had to face or manage in the new environment,9. Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.(p4)Habit is a regulating force that maintains established order of society and prevents any sudden change in it.10. It alone is what keeps up all with the bounds of ordinance. (p4)It keeps us all in the different professional, geographical, orsocial positions designated to us by law or fate.11. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted bythose brought up to tread therein. (p4)Because of habit, those who have been trained to work in that place since their childhood will not give up those most difficult and unpleasant occupation.12. It protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. (p4)It makes the natives of the desert and the frozen zone stay in their own place because of habit.13. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nature or our earlychoice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. (p4)Habit determines that one will stay and work hard till the end of life in a disagreeable occupation which he was brought to follow or chose early in our life, and try to accept and manage it as well as he can. Because there is no other choice for which we are suitable, and it is too late to begin again.14. Although at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling downon the young commercial traveler. (p4)By age 25, your future career has been settled down and you have formed peculiar habits in work.15. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought,the prej udices, the ways of the “shop”, in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coatsleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. (p4) You get the general idea of the traits of one’s p ersonality, the particular way of thinking, the personal preference, the ways in which one does one’s business, they are all fixed habits. Therefore, the man cannot escape his old habits he has acquired just as his coat sleeve cannot suddenly fall into a new set of folds which has been ironed into it.16. It is best he should not escape. (p4)It is most desirable he should not eacape.17. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent;If one learns a language after the age of twenty, he will almost never sound like a native speaker, but only like a foreigner;18. Hardly, ever can a youth transformed to the society of his betters unclean and nasalityand other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. (p5) Any young man who has been promoted to a higher social position may learn to give up his nasal accents and other bad habits that have been brought up in him by his early education.19. An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arranged this yearas he was the last; and how his better-clad acquaintances continue to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. (p5)A person’s old habits, as powerful as gravity, make him to take control over hisbehaviors…20. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of thefound. (p6)The calculation of good habits formed is just like the investment of money in a project, if you can form a good habit in your early years, you can benefit a lot from them and enjoy the comfortable life in the future.21. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody ofautomatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. (p6)Most of the trivial items in our life can become a habit and can be taken of our conscious mind which therefore can be used for more important task.22. Full half the time of such a man goes to deciding, or regretting, of matters which oughtto be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. (p6)Such man spends not less than half of his time deciding or regretting which should be deeply fixed and really should not all matters for his conscious thinking at all.Lesson 4 The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen1. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue. (p1)They hardly ever spoke during the meal, and when they did speak, they spoke in a way that the author cannot understand what they are talking about.2. Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance,but her own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to any in the world except herself and her companion. (p1)Sometimes the pretty girl who sat near window over there gave them a casual glance, but she was so much troubled by her own problem that she couldn’t pay any attentions to others but to herself and her fiancé.3. …… petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way ofspeaking --- perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which she not long ago left. (p2)…… her face was small, delicate, and clean, and was as oval-shaped as a miniature, representing the typical feminine face admired as perfect by Regency time, though she spoke in a firm, commanding tone and an upper-class manner, typical of those who had been educated at a highly prestigious school for upper-class young women, which she graduated not long ago.4. Her companion appeared a little distraught. (p4)Her partner seemed somewhat worried or upset about what to do next.5. I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. (p5)I could see them to be two small portraits hanging side by side as decorations for thesurface of a wall.6. He should have been a young officer in Nelson’s navy in the days when a certainweakness and sensitivity were no bar to promotion. (p5)He should have had an easy access to promotion in Nelson’s navy despite some weakness and sensitivities as he had some feminine features which would be admired by people then.7. She deserved a better life. (p6)She could have enjoyed an easier life than toiling as a novelist.8. You know you don’t get on with him. This way we shall be quite independent. (p8)You know you don’t have a good relationship with your uncle. If we do as I have said we shall be quite independent.9. My mother says that writing is a good crutch… (p13)She disapproves of writing as the main thing (a career), but though writing is good only as an auxiliary support.10. a pretty solid crutch (p14)If you should think writing is support, I would argue that it isa pretty solid support. It can be the main source of a living.11. I see what you mean. (p26)I understand what you are trying to say.12. I was on the side of his mother. It was a humiliating thought, but I was probably abouthe r mother’s age. (p26)I agreed with his mother that writing should not be a career, but only a support.Although knowing oneself to be old would cause discomfort and embarrassment, I was actually about her mother’s age and therefore quite in a position to advise her and her future.13. …… “the long defeat of doing nothing well” (p27)…… “the frustration of being unable to write anything goodf or many years”14. ……, by performance and not by promise. (p27)……, by what you have actually written, not by any indication of potential success in you.15. I didn’t know you’d ever been there. (p29)The polite way of saying “I know you have never been th ere(so how can you write about a place you don’t know?)16. A fresh eye’s terribly important. (p30)It’s all good to see something new.17. Perhaps, we’d go better to marry when you come back. (p37)It will be more sensible of us to get married when you come back.18. ……couldn’t you observe a bit more near home? Here in London. (p47)…… why go off to St. Tropez? Couldn’t you write somethinga bout here, about London?19. Darling, you’re awfully decorative, but sometimes --- well, you simply don’t connect.(p51)You look awfully good. (If we go out together, I can feel proud of being accompanied by such a handsome young man.) But you haven’t got int elligence, you absolutely don’t connect one meaning to author.20. …… bowed to each other, as though they wer e blocked in doorway. (p54)…… yielded apologetically to each other in such a manner as if they have dumped into each other in a doorway, as one was going out and the other coming in21. I had thought the two young people matching miniatures, but what a contrast in factthere was. The same type of prettiness could contain weakness and strengthens.(p55)I had wrongly believed that the two young people were a good match for their looks.But now I saw they were so different in nature. The same pretty looks could mean a weak character in some people, but a strong character in others.22. Her Regency counterpart, I suppose, would have borne a dozen children without theaid of anesthetics, while he would have fallen an easy victim to the first dark eyes in Naples. (p55)If she had lived in Regency time, she would have been able to give birth to a dozen children without the use of anesthetics. However, if he had been a young officer in Nelson’s navy and had called at the port of Naples, he would easily have been secured by the first Italian woman he met after setting foot ashore.23. I didn’t like to think of her as the Mrs. Humphrey Ward of her generation --- not that Iwould live so long. (p55)I dreaded the thought of her becoming a well-established writer. This was not becauseI would live so long as to see her become another Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the Mrs.Humphrey Ward of her time. But this was because I was deeply aware that the further she went along a writer’s road, the more severely she was sure to suffer.24. Old ages saves us from the realization of a great many fears. (p55)Being old enable we to avoid seeing many unpleasant things happen. Because we are old, we will not live to see a great many things we fear actually happen.25. ……, and she didn’t look lik e Mrs. Humphrey Ward. (p55)……, Mrs. Humphrey Ward looked plain, while she lookedpretty, and her photo on the back of the jacket would help make the book well received by reviewers as well as readers.26. Sometimes you are so evasive I think you don’t want to marry me at all. (p57)evasive: deliberately avoiding the major topic of getting married。

MATRICULATION FIXATIONJoe Queenan1. Two years ago, I was languishing in the waiting room of a Philadelphia hospital when a complete stranger unexpectedly began telling me about his daughter’s college plans. As my seventy-nine-year-old mother was recovering from major surgery that afternoon, I could not give him my complete and undivided attention. But as the briefing session wore on, I did manage to garner most of the relevant details.2. The girl, bright but not brilliant, had been accepted to a first-tier university without financial aid but had also been accepted to a local, second-echelon university where she was promised a free ride. Money being tight, with other college-bound children in the family queue, the man had persuaded his daughter to accep t the second university’s offer. Now he was worried that she would one day rue this decision. Because she would be graduating from a less prestigious institution, fewer contacts would be made and fewer doors would be opened. Her degree would put her within striking distance of the yellow brick road, but not physically on the road itself.3. As a man of the world accustomed to being told the most intimate details about complete strangers’ marriages, careers, and hobbies, I had long ago acquired the requisite skills to mediate this crisis. I told the man that many of my high school classmates had graduated from the second-tier university in question and had gone on to live rich, full lives.4. I told him that I myself had graduated from a second-echelon Philadelphia university not unlike the one his daughter was entering, and had managed to carve out a nice little niche for myself. I told him that my college days had been among the happiest of my life, that the sun never set without my thanking God for the illumination and inspiration provided by my talented, dedicated professors. Pressed for biographical data, I explained that I was a freelance writer, ticked off a list of my credentials, and said I was pretty happy with the way my career had turned out.5. The man had never heard of me, had never read anything I’d written. Though he tried to feign interest in my pathetic curriculum vitae, I could see that he was devastated. By following an academic path similar to mine, his daughter, who was also planning a career in journalism, was going to end up as big a failure as I.6. I never did find out why he was visiting the hospital.7. I mention this incident because it illustrates the neurotic gabbiness that afflicts parents when it comes time to send their children to college. I know whereof I speak. Next fall, my daughter goes to college. Three years later my son will follow suit. I willbe sorry to see them go; over the years they have proved to be remarkably amusing. But every dark cloud has a silver lining. Once my children have left the house, I will never again have to participate in a mind-numbing discussion about where my children or my friends’ children or my neighbors’ children are going to college, and why. On this subject, I am completely lapped out.8. This lack of interest does not stem from pure selfishness or unalloyed contempt for other people’s offspring. Rather, I feel this way because I find almost all conversations about the college selection process to be banal, self-aggrandizing, self-fl agellatory, or punitive. I’d rather talk about cribbage.9. The most infuriating conversation is the one where the parent clearly seeks a decisive, career-validating moment of emotional closure. Such individuals believe that securing admission to a top-flight university provides a child with an irrevocable passport to success, guaranteeing a life of uninterrupted economic mirth. Parents such as these upwardly mobile chuckleheads exude an almost Prussian3 belligerence when announcing their children’s destin ations, congratulating themselves on a job well done, while issuing a sotto voce taunt to parents of the less gifted. For them, the hard part of child rearing is now over. Junior went to the right prep, made the right friends, signed up for the right activities, and is now headed for the right school. Now we can get the heck out of here and move to Tuscany.10. But in reality, life doesn’t end at age seventeen. Or twenty-one! In real life, some children get the finest educations but still become first-class screwups. My own profession is filled with people who went to the right school but ended up in the wrong career. Some of those boys and girls most likely to succeed are going to end up on welfare or skid row. At which point they’ll need parental input. Or cash. A parent’s responsibility doesn’t end once the kids leave. A parent’s responsibility never ends. That’s why Nature gives you the job.411. A second, far more numerous class of obsessives consists of people who suddenly realize that their Brand X children aren’t going to make the cut. Seventeen years of unread textbooks, unvisited museums, and untaken AP courses are now finally taking their toll, and those grandiose delivery-room dreams of Amherst5, Bard6, and Duke7 are suddenly going up in smoke. Bashfully, shamefacedly, miserably, these parents now mumble the names of the glamourless institutions their progeny are skulking off to. Invariably, they are colleges you never heard of in towns no one wants to visit in states whose capitals only repeat winners on Jeopardy!8 can name. The market has spoken, the glum parental expressions seem to say. My child is an idiot.12. But once again, reality has a way of upsetting the worst-laid plans of mice and Mensa9. Some kids are late bloomers. Some kids are better off in a less competitive environment. Lots of people achieve huge success in this society without a degreefrom a prestigious university. Just because your child has failed to clear the first, or even the twentieth, hurdle doesn’t mean you should disown him. Matisse didn’t get rolling until he was in his forties.10 Bill Gates11, David Geffen12, Michael Dell13, Graydon Carter14, and adonna15 are all college dropouts. Ronald Reagan16 attended tiny Eureka college, while Warren Buffet17 went to Football U in Lincoln, Nebraska. Despite what you may have read in F. Scott Fitzgerald18 (who dropped out of Princeton in 1917), life doesn’t have just one act.19 There is often Act Two. And Act Five. Not to mention the sequels. Matriculation fixation reaches its dottiest form during the obligatory campus visit. Here it is never entirely clear what parents are looking for, particularly in high-profile institutions whose renown has in some way preceded them. During a recent visit to MIT, I watched the first thirty seconds of an admissions office video poking fun at the university’s reputation as a nerd factory. While my wife and daughter watched the rest of the video, which assured applicants that MIT nerds were hard to find, I took a stroll around the campus. I saw a lot of nerds. And I do not mean this as a criticism.13. Later that morning, a guide showed a bunch of us around the campus. At one juncture, she pointed out a restaurant where students could grab a fast, inexpensive meal. “How much?” asked one high-str ung mother. “About eight bucks,” she was told. The woman shuddered, noting that forking over eight dollars for dinner every night could get pretty darned expensive.14. “It’s going to cost you forty grand to send your kid to school here,” I interjected. “Don’t start worrying about dinner prices.”15. Since that visit this fall, this incident has become an invaluable part of my repertory. Now, whenever I am dragooned into the 30,000th interminable conversation about the college selection process, I indicate that sedulous monitoring of on-campus restaurant prices should be a vital component of the winnowing procedure, particularly vis-à-vis panini. People who hear me say things like this can’t decide whether I am insensitive or ornery or flat-out dumb. Well, let’s just put it this way: I was never MIT material.1. 两年前的一天，我坐在费城一所医院的大厅里焦急地等待着，一位素不相识的人突然向我讲述了他女儿的大学就读计划。

NettlesOur farm was small-nine acres. It was small enough for me to have explored every part of it. Each of the trees on the place had an attitude and a presence-the elm looked serene and the oak threatening, the maples friendly, the hawthorn old and crabby. Even the pits on the river flats had their flats had their distinct character.The girls as well as the boys were divided into two sides. Each girl had her own pile of balls and was working for paticular soldiers, and when a soldier fell wounded he would call out a girl’s name, so that she could drag him away and dress his wounds as quickly as possible. I made weapons for Mike, and mine ws the name he called. There was a keen alarm when the cry came, a wire zinging through your whole body, a fanatic feeling of devotion. When Mike was wounded he never opened his eyes. He lay limp and still while I pressed slimy large leaves to his forehead and throat and-pulling out his shirt-to his pale tender stomach, with its sweet and vulnerable belly button.One morning, of course, the job was all finished, the well capped, the pump reinstated, the fresh water marvelled at. And the truck did not come. There were two fewer chairs at the table for the noon meal. Mike and I had barely looked at each other during those meals. He liked to put ketcup on his bread. His father talked to my father, and the talk was mostly about well, accidents, water tables. A serious man. All work, my father said. Yet- he-Mike’s father-ended nearly every speech with a laugh. The laugh had a lonely boom in it, as if he were still down the well.Sunny and I had been friends in Vancouver years before. Our pregnancies had dovetailed, so that we had managed with one set of maternity clothes. In my kitchen or in hers, once a week or so, distracted by our children and sometimes reeling for lack of sleep, we stoked ourselves up on strong coffee and cigarettes and launched out on a rampage of talk about our marriages, our personal deficiencies, our interesting and discreditable motives, and our forgone ambitions. We read Jung at the same time and tried to keep track of our dreams. During that time of life that is supposed to be a reproductive daze, with the woman’s mind all swamped by maternal juices, we were still compelled to discuss Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler and “The Cocktail Party”.He had slept in the guest bedroom the night before but tonight he’d moved downstairs to the fold-out sofa in the front room. Sunny had given him fresh sheets rather than unmarking and making up again the bed he had left for me.Lying in those same sheets did not make for a peaceful night. I knew that he wouldn’t come to see, no matter how small the risk was. It would be a sleazy thing to do, in the house of his friends. And how could he be sure that it was what I wanted? Or that it was what he really wanted? Even I was not sure of it. Up till now, I had always been able to think of myself as a woman who was faithful to the person who she was sleeping with at any given time. My sleep was shallow, my dreams monotonously lustful, with irritating and unpleasant subplots. All night-or at least whenener I woke up-the crickets wre singing outside my windows. At first I thought it was birds. I had lived in cities long enough to have forgotten how crickets can make a perfect waterfall of noise.The bushes right at the edge of the grass looked impenetrable, but close up there were little openings, the narrow paths that animals or people looking for golf balls had made. The ground sloped slightly downward, and we could see a bit of the river. The water was steel gray, and lookedto be rolling. Between it and us there was a meadow of weeds, all in bloom-goldenrod, jewelweed with its red-and-yellow bells, and what I thought were flowering nettles withpinkish-purple clusters, and wild asters. Even the most frail-stemmed, delicate-looking plants had grown up almost as high as, or higher than, our heads. When we stopped and looked up through them we could see something coming, from the direction of the midnight clouds. It was the real rain, coming at us behind the splatter we were getting. It looked as if a large portion of the sky had detached itself and was bearing down, bustling and resolute, taking a not quite recognizable but animate shape. Curtains of rain-not veils but really thick and wildly slapping curtains-were deiven ahead of it. We could see them distinctly, when all we were feeling were light were light, lazy drops. It was almost as if we were looking through a window, and not quite believing that the window would shatter, until it did, and rain and wind hit us, all together, and my hair was lifted an fanned out above my head. I felt as if my skin might do that next.We remained like this until the wind passed over. That could not have been more than five minutes, perhaps onlu two or three. Tain still fell, but now it was ordinary heavy rain. He took his hands away, and we stood up, shakly. Our shirts and slacks were stuck fast to our bodie. We tried to simle, but had hardly the strength for it. Then we kissed and pressed together briefly. This was more of a ritual, a recognition of survival rather than of our bodies’inclinations. Our lips slid against each other, slick and cool, and the pressure of the embrace made us slightly chilly, as fresh water was squished out of our clothing.The bluest eyeThey have the eyes of people who can tell what time it is by the color of the sky. Such girls live in quiet black neighborhoods where everybody is gainfully employed. Where there are porch swings hanging from chains. Where the grass is cut with a scythe, where the grass is cut with a scythe, where rooster combs and sunflowers grow in the yards and pots of bleeding hearts, ivy, and mother-in-law tongue line the steps and windowsills. Such girls have bought watermelon and snap beans from the fruit man’s wagon. They have put in the window the cardboard sigh that has a pound measure printed on each of three edges-qo lbs., 25lbs., 50ibs. –and NO ICE on the fourth. These paticular brown girls from Mobil and Ailen are not like some of their sisters. They are not fretful, nervous, or shrill; they do not have lovely black necks that stretch as though against and invisible collar; their eyes do not bite. These sugar-brown Mobil girls move through the streets without a stir. They are as sweet and plain as buttercake.They go to land-grant colleges, normal schools, and learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement: home economics to prepare his food; teacher education to instruct black children in obedience; music to soothe the weary master and entertain his blunted soul. Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.What they do not know is that this plain brown girl will build her nest stick by stick, make it her own inviolable world, and stand guard over its every plant, weed, and doily, even against him. In silence will she return the lamp to where she put it in the first place; remove the dishes from the table as soon as the last bite is taken; wipe the doornob after a greasy hand has torched it. A sidelong look will be enough to tell him to smoke on the back porch. Children will sense instantly that they cannot come into her yard to retrieve a ball. But the men do not know these things. Nor do they know that she will give him her body sparingly and partially.The cat will settle quietly on the windowsill and earess her with his eyes. She can hold him inher arms, letting his back paws stuggle for footing on her breast and his forepaws cling to her shoulder. She can rub the smooth fur and feel the unresisting flesh underneath. At her gentlest touch he will preen, stretch, and open his mouth. And she will accept the strangely pleasant sensation that comes when he writhes beneath her hand and flattens his eyes with a surfeit of sensual delight. When she stands cooking at the table, he will circle about her fingers tremble a little in the pie dough.Junior used to long to play with the black boys. More than anything in the world he wanted to play King of the Mountain and have them pish him down th mound of dirt and roll over him. He wanted to feel their hardness pressing on him. Smell their wild blackness, and say “Fuck you”with that lovely casualness. He wanted to sit with them on curbstones and compare the shapeness of jackknives, the distance and crcs of spitting. In the toilet he wanted to share with them the laurels of being able to pee far and long.He oulled her into another room, even more beautiful than the first. More doilies, a big lamp with green-and-gold base and white shade. There was even a rug on the floor, with enormous dark-red flowers. She was deep in admiration of the flowers when Junior said, “here!”Pecola turned. “Here is your kitten!” he screeched. And he threw a big black cat right in her face. She sucked in her breath in fear and surprise and felt fur in her mouth. The cat clawed her face and chest in an effort to right itself, then leaped nimbly to the floor.。