The Libido for the Ugly
爱丑之欲
H. L. Mencken
1 On a Winter day some years ago, coming out of Pittsburgh on one of the expresses of the Pennsylvania Railroad, I rolled eastward for an hour through the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county. It was familiar ground; boy and man, I had been through it often before. But somehow I had never quite sensed its appalling desolation. Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth--and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous , so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke . Here was wealth beyond computation, almost beyond imagination--and here were human habitations so abominable that they would have disgraced a race of alley cats.
2 I am not speaking of mere filth. One expects steel towns to be dirty. What I allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in sight. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that did not insult and lacerate the eye. Some were so bad, and they were among the most pretentious --churches, stores, warehouses, and the like--that they were down-right startling; one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with his face shot away. A few linger in memory, horrible even there: a crazy little church just west of Jeannette, set like a
dormer-window on the side of a bare leprous hill; the headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at another forlorn town, a steel stadium like a huge rattrap somewhere further down the line. But most of all I recall the general effect--of hideousness without a break. There was not a single decent house within eyerange from the Pittsburgh to the Greensburg yards. There was not one that was not misshapen, and there was not one that was not shabby.
3 The country itself is not uncomely, despite the grime of the endless mills. It is, in form, a narrow river valley, with deep gullies running up into the hills. It is thickly settled, but not: noticeably overcrowded. There is still plenty of room for
building, even in the larger towns, and there are very few solid blocks. Nearly every house, big and little, has space on all four sides. Obviously, if there were architects of any professional sense or dignity in the region, they would have perfected a chalet to hug the hillsides--a chalet with a high-pitched roof, to throw off the heavy Winter snows, but still essentially a low and clinging building, wider than it was tall. But what have they done? They have taken as their model a brick set on end. This they have converted into a thing of dingy clapboards with a narrow, low-pitched roof. And the whole they have set upon thin, preposterous brick piers . By the hundreds and thousands these abominable houses cover the bare hillsides, like gravestones in some gigantic and decaying cemetery. On their deep sides they are three, four and even five stories high; on their low sides they bury themselves swinishly in the mud. Not a fifth of them are perpendicular . They lean this way and that, hanging on to their bases precariously . And one and all they are streaked in grime, with dead and eczematous patches of paint peeping through the streaks.
4 Now and then there is a house of brick. But what brick! When it is new it is the color of a fried egg. When it has taken on the patina of the mills it is the color of an egg long past all hope or caring. Was it necessary to adopt that shocking color? No more than it was necessary to set all of the houses on end. Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity. Let it become downright black, and it is still sightly , especially if its trimmings are of white stone, with soot in the depths and the high spots washed by the rain. But in Westmoreland they prefer that uremic yellow, and so they have the most loathsome towns and villages ever seen by mortal eye.
5 I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer. I have seen, I believe, all of the most unlovely towns of the world; they are all to be found in the United States. I have seen the mill towns of decomposing New England and the desert towns of Utah, Arizona and Texas. I am familiar with the back streets of Newark, Brooklyn and Chicago, and have made scientific explorations to Camden, N. J. and Newport News, Va. Safe in a Pullman , I have whirled through the g1oomy, Godforsaken villages of Iowa and Kansas, and the malarious tidewater hamlets of Georgia. I have been to Bridgeport, Conn., and to Los Angeles. But nowhere on this earth, at home or abroad, have I seen anything to compare to the villages that huddle aloha the line of the Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh yards to Greensburg.
They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable in design. It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius , uncompromisingly inimical to man, had devoted all the ingenuity of Hell to the making of them. They show grotesqueries of ugliness that, in retrospect ,become almost diabolical .One cannot imagine mere human beings concocting such dreadful things, and one can scarcely imagine human beings bearing life in them.
6 Are they so frightful because the valley is full of foreigners--dull, insensate brutes, with no love of beauty in them? Then why didn't these foreigners set up similar abominations in the countries that they came from? You will, in fact, find nothing of the sort in Europe--save perhaps in the more putrid parts of England. There is scarcely an ugly village on the whole Continent. The peasants, however poor, somehow manage to make themselves graceful and charming habitations, even in Spain. But in the American village and small town the pull is always toward ugliness, and in that Westmoreland valley it has been yielded to with an eagerness bordering upon passion. It is incredible that mere ignorance should have achieved such masterpieces of horror.
7 On certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly, as on other and less Christian levels there is a libido for the beautiful. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence , or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. Such ghastly designs, it must be obvious, give a genuine delight to a certain type of mind. They meet, in some unfathomable way, its obscure and unintelligible demands. The taste for them is as enigmatical and yet as common as the taste for dogmatic theology and the poetry of Edgar A Guest.
8 Thus I suspect (though confessedly without knowing) that the vast majority of the honest folk of Westmoreland county, and especially the 100% Americans among them, actually admire the houses they live in, and are proud of them. For the same money they could get vastly better ones, but they prefer what they have got. Certainly there was no pressure upon the Veterans of Foreign Wars to choose the dreadful edifice that bears their banner, for there are plenty of vacant buildings along the trackside, and some of them are appreciably better. They might, in- deed, have built a better one of their own. But they chose that clapboarded horror with their eyes open, and having chosen it, they let it mellow into
its present shocking depravity. They like it as it is: beside it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend them. In precisely the same way the authors of the rat-trap stadium that I have mentioned made a deliberate choice: After painfully designing and erecting it, they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completely impossible penthouse painted a staring yellow, on top of it. The effect is that of a fat woman with a black eye. It is that of a Presbyterian grinning. But they like it.
9 Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. The etiology of this madness deserves a great deal more study than it has got. There must be causes behind it; it arises and flourishes in obedience to biological laws, and not as a mere act of God. What, precisely, are the terms of those laws? And why do they run stronger in America than elsewhere? Let some honest Privat Dozent in pathological sociology apply himself to the problem.
(from Reading for Rhetoric by Caroline Shrodes,
Clifford A, Josephson, James R. Wilson ) NOTES
1. the Veterans of Foreign Wars: generally abbreviated to VFW, an organization created by the merger in 1914 of three societies of United States overseas veterans that were founded after the Spanish-American War of 1899. With its membership vastly increased after World War Ⅰand World WarⅡ, the organization became a major national veterans' society.
2. Guest: Edgar Albert Guest (1881--1959), English-born newspaper poet, whose daily poem in the Detroit Free Press was widely syndicated and extremely popular with the people he called 'folks' for its homely, saccharine morality
3. Parthenon: a beautiful doric temple built in honor of the virgin (Parthenos) goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens around 5th century B. C.
4. Presbysterian: a form of church government by presbyters developed by John Calvin and other reformers during the
16th-century Protestant Reformation and used with variations by Reformed and Presbyterian churches throughout the world. According to Calvin's theory of church government, the church is a community or body in which Christ only is head and
members are equal under him. All who hold office do so by election of the people whose representatives they are. Mencken assumes that Presbyterians are puritanical, sombrefaced people who never smile or laugh. Hence people are shocked by the unexpected and incongruous sight of a Presbyterian grinning.
Lesson Seven Libido for the Ugly
I.Henry Louis Mencken (1880--1956) was the first American to be widely read as a critic. He was born in Baltimore, Md. , on Sept. 12, 1880, and privately educated there. After graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute at the age of 16, he became a reporter on the Baltimore Herald. He rose repidly, soon he was the Herald's city editor and then edi tor. In 1906 Mencken joined the organization known as the Sunpaper, which he served in a variety of ways until his re- tirement. Mencken' s journalistic skill became his chief hand- icap as a critic. He had also carried out a fruitful study of the American Language, with some comprehensive works pub- lished in this field. By the time of his death on Jan. 29, 1956, in his beloved Baltimore, recognition of his service to the language was everywhere admitted.
1. The writer is referring to industrial production which is the most lucrative and characteristic activity in the United States.
2. All the noble aspirations of a man for a better, fuller and more beautiful life here on earth.
3. All the houses were ugly. The houses look like bricks set on end. They were made of clapboards, with narrow, low- pitched roofs. And the whole house is set upon thin brick piers. All the houses are streaked with grime and many of them are not even perpendicular but they lean this way and that. The writer suggests a chalet-type house for the hill sides. A chalet with high-pitched roof, to throw off the
heavy winter snows, but still essentially a low and clinging building, wider than it was tall.
4, According to the writer, the house has the most loathsome color. The color of a fried egg when and after some time they take on the color of uremic yellow.
5. Strictly speaking, no. Most of them were most probably U.S. citizens of European origin, with perhaps a few re- cent immigrants from Europe.
6. Mencken doesnI t believe that mere ignorance was the rea son for such ugliness. He believes on certain levels of the American race, there seems to be a great passion for the ugly. Ugliness seems to give some sort of satisfaction to this type of mind. Mencken, however, doesnf t understand they have such tastes.
7. No. he is only implying in a sarcastic tone, that he does- n~t understand why so many Americans seem to love ugli ness for its own sake. He doesn~ t understand the psycholo gy of these people who lust to make the world intolerable. He thinks these people have a diseased mind.
1. Mencken deliberately uses the word "libido", a special
term in psychoanalysis, in his title to create the impres sion that his description and analysis has some scientific foundation.
2. Paragraph 1 is developed by contrasting the great wealth of this region to the abominable human habitations seen everywhere. The last two sentences bring home to readers that ugliness is not due to poverty, but to something in- nate in the American character--a love of ugliness for its own sake, or, as the title says, the libido for the ugly.
3. Meneken refers to other towns and villages in America, to the villages of Europe and to the Parthenon in order to em- phasize the ugliness of Westmoreland County. He means to say Westmoreland is the ugliest spot on earth and the United States as a whole is uglier than Europe.
4. The author also attacks the whole American raee a race that loves ugliness for its own sake, that lusts to make the world intolerable; a race which hates beauty as it hates truth (see the text, para. 9)
5. The satirical power of the authorr s attack in this essay is not only a result of his choice of words, of his diction, but also his masterly employment of the various rhetoric means such as metaphors, similes, hyperboles and so on. Examples may be referred to the answers to Exs. XIII, XIV,XV.
6. So far as the point which the author wanted to make is concerned, all the metaphors, similes and hyperboles are used appropriately and effectively.
7. As a rule, an excessive use of strong language in writing tends to be
self-defeating. Mencken uses a lot of hyper boles to exaggerate and also makes abundant use of sar casm, ridicule and irony to taunt the jeer in the essay. It may lead the average reader to doubt the objectivity and fairness or even the honesty of the writer. He may feel the writer perhaps has a special axe to grind and lose interest in what he has to say. So one might say Mencken employs all the force of diction, structure and figures only to batter his readers into insensitivity.
IV.
1. As a boy and later when I was a grown-up man, I had of- ten travelled through the region.
2. But somehow in the past I never really perceived how shocking and wretched this whole region was.
3. This dreadful scene makes all human endeavors to advance
and improve their lot appear as a ghastly, saddening joke.
4. The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt spread by the innumerable mills in this region.
5. The model they followed in building their houses was a brick standing upright. / All the houses they built iooked like bricks standing upright.
6. These brick-like houses were made of shabby, thin wooden boards and their roofs were narrow and had little slope.
7. When the brick is covered with the black soot of the mills it takes on the color of a rotten egg.
8. Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time. / Even in a steel town, old red bricks still appear pleasing to the eye.
9. I have given Westmoreland the highest award for ugliness after having done a lot of hard work and research and after continuous praying.
10. They show such fantastic and bizarre ugliness that, in looking back, they become almost fiendish and wicked./ When one looks back at these houses whose ugliness is so fantastic and bizarre, one feels they must be the work of the devil himself.
11. It is hard to believe that people built such horrible houses just because they did not know what beautiful houses were like.
12. People in certain strata of American society seem definite- ly to hunger after ugly things; while in other less Chris- tian strata, people seem to long for things beautiful.
13. These ugly designs, in some way that people cannot un- derstand, satisfy the hidden and unintelligible demands of this type of mind.
14. They put a penthouse on top of it, painted in a bright, conspicuous yellow color and thought it looked perfect but they only managed to make it absolutely intolerable.
15. From the intermingling of different nationalities and races in the United States emerges the American race which hates beauty as strongly as it hates truth．
V．See the translation of the text．
Ⅵ．
1．express：a fast，direct train。Making few stops
2．roll：travel in a wheeled vehicle(here an express train)
3．revolting：disgusting
4.line：railway line
5．yard：a railway center where trains are made up，serviced，switched from track to track。etc．
6．streak：mark with streaks(a line or long，thin mark)
7．sightly：pleasant to the sight
8．pullman：a railroad car with private compartments or seats that can be
made up into berths for sleeping．It is so—called after the U．S．inventor，George。M．Pullman(1831— 1897)．
9．save：except。but
10．yield：surrender，give into border upon：be like，almost be
11．pull：drawing force．appeal
12．1evel：position。elevation，or rank considered as one of the planes in a scale of values
13．put down(to)：attribute(to)
14．impossible：not capable of being endured，used。agreed to，etc．，because of being disagreeable or unsuitable：hard to tolerate
Ⅶ.
1．dirt指任何不清洁的或玷污之物，如泥土、灰尘、粪便、垃圾；filth一词用来表示脏得令人作呕的东西；soot是指主要由炭粒构成，由物质的不完全燃烧所形成的一种黑色物质；grime指沉积在表面上或嵌入表面之中的煤烟或小颗粒状污秽。
2．love意指强烈的喜爱或深刻的倾心，可用于表示各种不同的关系或用于各种对象(如性爱、手足之爱、对工作之爱等)；passion通指一种具有压倒或强制性的强烈情绪，如：His passions overcame his reason．(他的激情压倒了他的理智。)；lust指一种欲望，特别是那种寻求不。受拘束的满足——感官满足，尤其是性满足的欲望；libido是精神分析学上的一个术语，能指精神上的能量，通指精神能量的一种基本形式，包含积极的、爱的本能，并在性格发展的不同阶段中表现出来。
Ⅶ．hideous。horrid。horrible，frightful，dreadful，terrible，awful，repulsive，repugnant，ghastly，revolting
Ⅸ．beauty．beautifulness。prettiness，handsomeness，attractiveness，loveliness，charm，pulchritude，grace，elegance，exquisiteness
X．
1．1ucrative，creative，destructive，indicative，fricative，e vocative，sedative，
negative，interrogative，relative，con templative
2．characteristic，realistic，artistic，egotistic，altruistic，im pressionistic，antagonistic，chauvinistic，humanistic，opti mistic，pressimistic
3．horrible，divisible，legible，invincible，edible，incredible，elegible。negligible，audible，intelligible，infallible
4．ghastly，harshly，finely，loosely，delicately，tersely，fear somely，deathly，steadfastly，curtly，eloquently
5．swinish，piggish，sluggish，doggish，hoggish，kittenish，owlish，ghoulish，girlish”fiendish，devilish
6．biological，theological，physiological，etymological，an thropological，astrological，bacteriological，psychologi cal，geological，archeological，mythological
7．10athsome，gladsome，ti’resome，venturesome，trouble some。burdensome，cumbersome，frolicsome，gruesome，quarrelsome，fearsome
8．hideous，outrageous，courageous，advantageous，contem poraneous．extemporaneous，simultaneous，spontaneous' instantaneous, extraneous, erroneous
XI. appalling desolation, dreadfully, hideous, intolerably, bleak, forlorn, abominable, filth, dirty, ugliness, revolt ing, monstrousness, horrible, leprous, hideousness, mis shapen, shabby, uncomely, grime, dingy, decaying, swin ishly, eczematous patches, shocking, uremic yellow, loath- some, unlovely, decomposing, gloomy, God-forsaken, malarious, grotesqueries of ugliness, diabolical, frightful, abominations, putrid, horror, deface, ghastly, depravity, etc.
XI. 1. profitable 2. dwellings, homes 3. refer to 4. wound, hurt 5. absurd, ridiculous 6. exactly upright, vertical7. unsafely, insecurely8. continual, repeated 9. unfriendly, hostile 10. insensitive, without feelings 11. hateful or dis gusting things 12. spoil the appearance of, disfigure care- lessness, oversight 13. building 14. causes
XI. The many metaphors and similes in the essay are largely ap propritately used in describing the ugliness of Westmoreland County. For example, in para.
3 the metaphor of comparing the houses there to pigs wallowing in the mud~ the metaphor in the same para. of comparing the patches of paint to dried up scales formed by a skin disease~ and the simile in para. 2 as shown in the sentence "one blinks ... shot away", the sim ile in the same para. as shown in the sentence "a steel stadi um ~ -- the line", just to mention a few. Hyperboles are profusely used in the essay. They are mostly very effective in conveying what the author had to say. In para. 1, we read the sentence "Here was wealth ... alley cats", exaggerating the richness and grandeur of this region and of America as a whole, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth ; in para. 5 we read "It is as if ... of them", which implies exaggeratedly that it is as if some genius of great power, who didn' t like to do the right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, em ployed all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses; and again in para. 2 there is the sentence "What al lude to " in sight", which suggests an exaggeration that is hard to believe. Not every house could have been that ugly.
XV. In the essay, sarcasm, ridicule or irony is employed profuse The following are just a few examples:
l. (Para. 2) "a steel stadium "" the line. " This description sounds ridiculous.
2. (Para. 3) "Obviously "-" the hillside. " We read evident sar- casm in this sentence.
3. (Para. 4) "When it was taken -'" or caring. " Here both ridicule and irony are suggested.
4. (Para. 5) "I award "" prayer. " We read both sarcasm and irony in this sentence.
5. (Para. 5) "They are "" in design. " Sarcasm is most appar- ent in the description.
6. (Para. 6) "It is incredible "" of horror. " Here the author obviously means to present the picture sarcastically and ironically.
XVI.
1. The topic sentence is: The "Band Wagon" is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandistr s program enrnasse. The paragraph beginning with a topic sentence is a high level generalization. Each sentence in the rest of the paragraph states specific details that develop the main idea. This paragraph has a simple deductive arrangement.
2. The main idea in this paragraph is stated in the last sen- tence :The drug culture, as the newspapers call it, doesnrt just belong to the kids; everyoner s in it together. The writ- er reverses the usual rule "go from the general to the par- ticular". He develops his topic sentence by specific, con crete detail--but he places the topic sentence at the end o the paragraph. That is, he follows an inductive pattern.
XlI. Omitted.
XVlI. A Sickening Village This is a village you will never want to revisit once you had been there. The road is grit-paved and dotted with sand and small stones here and there. If you happen to have a pair of thin-sole shoes, your feet are certain to suffer. On a sunny day, if a truck or a tractor passes by, you are covered with dust left behind. On a rainy day, your trouser legs soon get dirty with muddy water. Here and there, you may find a pile of building materials such as bricks, cement boards, sand ca- sually lying in a disorderly way. There are trees on one side of the road. Some are a little tall, some quite short, and on each tree you cannot fail to find broken branches. As for the hous- es, they are in different size, different height, and different colour. They Stand there one after another with no harmony. If you want your students to seareh for the antonym of "unity", just bring them here. You can see a pond at the end of the
road. Actually you needn't see it. Use your nose and the smell will make you sicken. Floating on the brownish filthy water are used wrapping paper, plastic bags, foams, and one or two dead dogs or mice.
Unit 7 GM's Difficult Road Ahead Episode 1 If the old saying “what?s good for American is good for General Motor and vice versa” is still true, we are all in a lot of trouble. General Motors is limping along in the breakdown lane, in need of a lot more than a minor tune-up. With GM?s stock trading near an all time low and its bonds rated as junk, the company reported losses of more than $10 billion last year. Unless it stops hemorrhaging money, it will have to be towed into bankruptcy court—a consequence that could cascade through the American economy, threatening up to a million jobs and changing the dreams of American workers. *General Motors is not just another company.For almost a century, it was emblematic of American industrial dominance, with a car for every customer and a brand for every stratum of society. ***Back when Pontiacs were as sexy as Sinatra and Cadillac the synonym for luxury, GM made half the cars in the United States. And a job on one of its assembly lines was a ticket into the middle class. But that was before the first oil shock, and the Japanese imports. Today, General Motors is losing $24 million a day—and *** all bets are off. Cole: **And this is not a phantom crisis or a fake crisis. This is a real crisis. David Cole is chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a non-profit consulting firm in Ann Arbor Michigan. He is widely considered one of the industry?s top analysts, and believes that Detroit is now facing what the steel industry and the big airlines have already been through: high labor costs that make it almost impossible to compete. Cole: And every one of the Big Three faces a problem right now of about $2000 to $2500 per vehicle produced cost disadvantage. ** If that plays out over time, they?re all dead. Correspondent: Change or die. Cole: It?s change o r die. Everything is driven by a profitable business. If you can?t be profitable, you can?t be in business. Episode 2: Wagoner: This is a mid-sized car, the Chevy Impala SS… It has certainly not escaped the attention of General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner, who we met at the Detroit Auto Show and may have the toughest job in America: running a corporation many analysts believe has become, too big , too bloated and too slow to compete with more nimble foreign competitors. Correspondent: How did General Motors get to the point where it is right now? Wagoner: …Cause we have a long history, almost 100 years. We have a lot of employees. We
高级英语第三版第一册课后英译汉答案 Unit1Paraphrase: 1.We’re23feet above sea level. 2.The house has been here since1915,andno hurricane has ever caused any damag e to it. 3.We can make the necessary preparations and survive the hurricane without much damage. 4.Water got into the generator and put it out.It stopped producing electricity,so the lights also went out. 5.Everybody goes out through the back door and runs to the cars! 6.The electrical systems in the car(the battery for the starter)had been put out by w ater. 7.As John watched the water inch its way up the steps,he felt a strong sense of guilt because he blamed himself for endangering the whole family by deciding not to flee i nland. 8.Oh God,please help us to get through this storm safely 9.Grandmother Koshak sang a few words alone and then her voice gradually grew di mmer and finally stopped. 10.Janis displayed the fear caused by the hurricanerather late. 1.每架飞机起飞之前必须经过严格的检查。（check out） Each and every airplane must be checked out thoroughly before taking off. 2.居民坚决反对在附近建立垃圾焚烧厂，因为他们担心工厂排放的气体会污染周围的空气。（waste incineration plant,concerned about） The residents were firmly against the construction of a waste incineration plant in th eir neighborhood because they were deeply concerned about the air pollution emitt ed by the plant. 3.在这个地区，生态工程的投资额高达数十亿。（mount to） In this area,investment in ecological projects mounted up to billions of yuan. 4.干枯的河道里布满了大大小小的石块。（strewn with） The dry riverbed was strewn with rocks of all sizes. 5.虽然战争给这个国家造成巨大的损失，但当地的文化传统并没有消亡。（perish）Although war caused great losses to this country,its local cultural traditi ons did not perish. 6.为了建筑现代化的高楼大厦，许多古老的、具有民族特色的建筑都被拆毁了。（demolish） To make space for modern high rises,a lot of ancient buildings with ethnic cultural fe atures had to be demolished. 7.在地震中多数质量差的房子的主体结构都散架了。（disintegrate） The main structures of most of the poor-quality houses disintegrated in the earthqua ke. 8.他为实现自己的目标付出了最大的努力，但最后美好的梦想还是化为了泡影。
E v e r y d a y U s e f o r Y o u r G r a n d m a m a In order to understand this passage better, we can watch a movie---”The Color of Purple” 故事发生于1909年美国南部。未受过教育的黑人女孩西莉被继父强奸后，又被迫嫁给了粗鲁，凶狠的黑人男子，西莉称其为“先生”。在惊恐和胆怯中她开始了奴仆一般的痛苦生活。幸而有亲姐妹南蒂与之相伴，泪水中才多了一些欢乐。不久，这短暂的幸福也从西莉身边消失了。因为“先生”强奸南蒂不成，恼羞成怒地将南蒂赶了出去，姐妹二人被残酷的分开。年复一年，西莉在门口的邮筒中找寻南蒂的音讯，她始终期盼有一天能与南蒂再次重逢……(从中大家可以看到当时的整个社会的缩影，以及黑人生活的社会环境和社会地位，黑人女性的崛起和黑人女性的反抗精神也从有深刻得展现) Everyday Use for Your Grandmama Characters: Maggie: a shy,young woman made even more self-concious by scars she got in a house fire years ago. She hasn` t has much formal education but has learned traditional skills, such as quilting, from her familiy. Mama(Mrs johnson): the narrator of the story. She is a middle-aged or even older African American woman living with her younger daugter, Maggie. Athough poor, she is strong and independent, and takes great pride in her way of life. Dee(Wangero): Dee is Mama` s older daugher. She is attractive, well-educated and sophisticated. Moreover, she is selfish and she may even has caused the fire that disfigured （损毁···的外貌）her sister. Mama(Mrs johnson) called her Dee or Wangero. Asalamalakim: a young muslim man who accompanies Dee on her visit. Mama, unable to pronounce his name , called him “Hakim-a- Baber”. The muslim greeting he gives to her means “peace and happiness to you. ” This maybe ironic because their visit disturbs the peaceful lives of Maggie and Mama. The relationship between him and Dee is unknown. He may be a friend, a boyfriend, husband or spiritual adviser. Main content:The story begins when the mother and Maggie wait for Dee to come back goes back home with her lover. She asks for some traditional household appliances, especially two old quilts made by their grandma. The mother refuses. Instead, she sends the two quilts to Maggie. Dee leaves her eyes, two old quilts(百纳被) are the cultural heritage of blacks. Maggie inherits the black tradition and she should own them. The text: I. para1-2 The prelude: the three family members. II. Para3-16 The mother’s recollections / flashback:the three persons’relationships——mother; Maggie; Dee III. Para17- 82 The process of Dee going back home. Detailed study of the text: Paragraph 1---16: Paragraph1: 1,...Maggie and I made so clean and wavy...(wavy:波动起伏的。It shows that Maggie and Mama had made carefully preparations for the arrival of Dee.) 2,It is like a extended living room. (extended: enlarged, prolonged. Expressions with extend: extended family) Paragraph 2: 1,```homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs...(homely: 不好看的，不漂亮的，later we will know how she got the scar, so that is a suspense.) 2, she thinks her sister has held life always...to say to her.(she think that her sister has always had a firm control of her life and that she can always has what she want. )(课后习题paraphrase )
高英课内考点：第一课：Paraphrase 1、we’re elevated 23 feet. Our house is 23 feet above sea level. 2、The place has been here since 1915,and no hurricane has ever bothered it. The house was built in 1915,and since then no hurricane has done any damage to it. 3、We can batten down and ride it out. We can make the necessary preparation and survive the hurricane without much damage. 4、The generator was doused,and the lights went out. Water got into the generator,it stopped working.As a result all lights were put out. 5、Everybody out the back door to the cars! Everyone go out through the back door and get into the cars! 6、The electrical systems had been killed by water.
The electrical systems in the cars had been destroyed by water. 7、John watched the water lap at the steps,and felt a crushing guilt. As John watched the water inch its way up the steps,he felt a strong sense of guilt because he blamed himself for endangering the family by making the wrong decision not to flee inland. 8、Get us through this mess,will You? Oh,God,please help us to get through this dangerous situation. 9、She carried on alone for a few bars;then her voice trailed away. She sang a few words alone and then her voice gradually grew dimmer and stopped. 10、Janis had just one delayed reaction. Janis didn’t show any fear on the spot during the storm,but she revealed her feelings caused by the storm a few nights after the hurricane by getting up in the middle of the night and crying softly. 英译汉： 1、But,like thousands of others in the coastal communities,John was reluctant to abandon his home unless the family----his wife,Janis,and their seven children,aged 3 to 11---was clearly endangered.
宇宙边缘的黑暗 很多领域的研究者都非常想直接目睹过去的情景，但是他们通常只能通过风化的化石、腐烂的羊皮纸或是木乃伊遗体拼凑起遥远过去的信息。而宇宙学却截然不同，这一学科研究的是宇宙的起源和发展，实际上在这一领域，我们可以直接见证历史。 人们肉眼所看到的点点星光是几年前或是几千年前射向我们的光子，效力大的望远镜发现远处物体所发射的光向我们这里走过的时间远远超过几年或几千年，有时甚至长达数十亿年。我们看到的远古的光线实际上是远古的时间。 过去十年对于这些远古星光的观察不仅为宇宙的过去提供了很深邃的见解，而且对于宇宙未来的本质也提供了深刻的见解。由于一种叫做“暗物质”的物体，这些数据所提供的未来尤其令人不安。 发现暗物质的故事从一个世纪以前开始，当时阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦认识到空间并非艾萨克·牛顿所预期的那样一成不变，恰恰相反，爱因斯坦通过自己研究的广义相对论发现，空间和时间可以扭曲和旋转，其反应的状态就像孩子跳跃的蹦床一样。实际上，空间的可延展性极强，按照数学上的推理，宇宙的大小是随着时间进行必要的改变的，空间的结构一定是在膨胀或是收缩，总之不可能完全不变。 对爱因斯坦来说，他无法接受这一结论，他已经花了十年艰难的时间来发展相对论，寻找对于重力更好的理解方式，但是对他来说，宇宙膨胀说或是宇宙缩小说的观念似乎完全错误，因为它公然违背了人们最普遍的知识---即宇宙是固定不变的。 爱因斯坦迅速做出了回应，他修改了相对论的方程式，以便数学结果可以产生出不变的宇宙。如同拔河中的僵持阶段一样，静态的局面需要相等而且相反的作用力来抵消彼此的力量。对于很远的距离以外，形成宇宙的力就是重力的引力，所以爱因斯坦推论出需要一个与引力相排斥的反作用力。但是这会是什么力呢？ 爱因斯坦惊讶地发现，自己简单地修改相对论的方程式需要反重力，反重力的概念将令牛顿非常惊讶---因为反重力是在推动对方而不是吸引对方。像地球和太阳这样普通的物体，只能产生引力。但是数学公式表明，在更远的地方，就像桑拿房中充满蒸汽一样，有一种能量可以产生重力的反作用力，这种能量均匀地充斥着太空，只是我们无法看见。爱因斯坦把这一充满太空的能量称为宇宙常数。他还发现只需微调一下宇宙常数的数值，其产生的斥力就能精确地抵消恒星和星系所产生的引力，从而产生静态的宇宙。爱因斯坦不禁如释重负地叹了口气。 然而十二年以后，爱因斯坦却对自己引入宇宙常数的概念后悔不迭。1929年，美国天文学家埃德温·哈勃发现所有远处的星系都在向远离我们的方向奔去，宇宙星系大批离去可以直接从广义相对论中得到最佳解释：就像正在烘烤的松饼上的罂粟种子在面团膨胀后互相分离一样，太空星系也互相分离。哈勃的观察建立了一个概念，没有必要设置宇宙常数，宇宙不是静止不变的。
高级英语第1册修辞练习第3版 Point the rhetorical devices used in the following sentences Lesson 1 1.We can batten down and ride it out. (Metaphor ) 2.Wind and rain now whipped the house. ( Metaphor ) 3.Stay away from the windows. (Elliptical sentence ) 4.--- the rain seemingly driven right through the walls. ( Simile) 5.At 8:30, power failed. (Metaphor ) 6.Everybody out the back door to the cars. (Elliptical sentence ) 7.The children went from adult to adult like buckets in a fire brigade. ( Simile ) 8…the electrical systems had been killed by water.( metaphor ) 9.Everybody on the stairs. ( elliptical sentence) 10.The wind sounded like the roar of a train passing a few yards away. ( simile ) 11. A moment later, the hurricane, in one mighty swipe, lifted the entire roof off the house and skimmed it 40 feet though the air. ( personification ) 12…it seized a 600,000-gallon Gulfport oil tank and dumped it 3.5 miles away. ( personification ) 13.Telephone poles and 20-inch-thick pines cracked like guns as the winds snapped them.( simile ) 14.Several vacationers at the luxurious Richelieu Apartments there held a hurricane party to watch the storm from their spectacular vantage point. ( Transferred epithet ) 15. Up the stairs --- into our bedroom. ( Elliptical sentence ) 16.The world seemed to be breaking apart. ( Simile ) 17. Water inched its way up the steps as first floor outside walls collapsed. (Metaphor ) 18.Strips of clothing festooned the standing trees.. (Metaphor ) 19…and blown-down power lines coiled like black spaghetti over the road.( simile ) 20…household and medical supplies streamed in by plane, train, truck and car. (metaphor ) 21.Camille, meanwhile, had raked its way northward across Mississippi, dropped more than 28 inches of rain into West.( metaphor ) Lesson2 1 Hiroshima—the”Liveliest”City in Japan.—irovy 2 That must be what the man in the Japanese stationmaster’s uniform shouted,as the fastest train in the world slipped to a stop in Hiroshima Station.—alliteration 3 And secondly.because I had a lump in my throat and a lot of sad thoughts on my mind that had little to do with anything in Nippon railways official might say.—metaphor 4 Was I not at the scene of crime?—rhetorical question 5 The rather arresting spectacle of little old Japan adrift amid beige concrete skyscrapers is the very symbol of the incessant struggle between the kimono and the miniskirt.—synecdoche,metonymy
高级英语第1册1234614课修辞练习含答案(第三版)
高级英语第1册修辞练习第3版 Point the rhetorical devices used in the following sentences Lesson 1 1.We can batten down and ride it out. (Metaphor ) 2.Wind and rain now whipped the house. ( Metaphor ) 3.Stay away from the windows. (Elliptical sentence ) 4.--- the rain seemingly driven right through the walls. ( Simile) 5.At 8:30, power failed. (Metaphor ) 6.Everybody out the back door to the cars. (Elliptical sentence ) 7.The children went from adult to adult like buckets in a fire brigade. ( Simile ) 8…the electrical systems had been killed by water.( metaphor )
9.Everybody on the stairs. ( elliptical sentence) 10.The wind sounded like the roar of a train passing a few yards away. ( simile ) 11. A moment later, the hurricane, in one mighty swipe, lifted the entire roof off the house and skimmed it 40 feet though the air. ( personification ) 12…it seized a 600,000-gallon Gulfport oil tank and dumped it 3.5 miles away. ( personification ) 13.Telephone poles and 20-inch-thick pines cracked like guns as the winds snapped them.( simile ) 14.Several vacationers at the luxurious Richelieu Apartments there held a hurricane party to watch the storm from their spectacular vantage point. ( Transferred epithet ) 15. Up the stairs --- into our bedroom. ( Elliptical sentence ) 16.The world seemed to be breaking apart.
高级英语第一册课文 1.The Middle Eastern Bazaar The Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds --- even thousands --- of years. The one I am thinking of particularly is entered by a Gothic - arched gateway of aged brick and stone. You pass from the heat and glare of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavernwhich extends as far as the eye can see, losing itself in the shadowy distance. Little donkeys with harmoniously tinkling bells thread their way among the throngsof people entering and leaving the bazaar. The roadway is about twelve feet wide, but it is narrowed every few yards by little stalls where goods of every conceivable kind are sold. The din of the stall-holder; crying their wares, of donkey-boys and porters clearing a way for themselves by shouting vigorously, and of would-be purchasers arguing and bargaining is continuous and makes you dizzy. Then as you penetrate deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance fades away, and you come to the muted cloth-market. The earthen floor, beaten hard by countless feet, deadens the sound of footsteps, and the vaulted mud-brick walls and roof have hardly any sounds to echo. The shop-keepers speak in slow, measured tones, and the buyers, overwhelmed by the sepulchral atmosphere, follow suit . One of the peculiarities of the Eastern bazaar is that shopkeepers dealing in the same kind of goods do not scatter themselves over the bazaar, in order to avoid competition, but collect in the same area, so
第七课aA 1…boy and man, I had been through it often before. As a boy and later when I was a grown-up man, I had of- ten travelled through the region. 2. But somehow I had never quite sensed its appaling desolation. But somehow in the past I never really perceived how shocking and wretched this whole region was. 3….it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke. This dreadful scene makes all human endeavors to advance and improve their lot appear as a ghastly,saddening joke. 4.The country itself is not uncomely, despite the grim of the endless mills. The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt spread by the innumerable mills in this region. 5.They have taken as their model a brick set on end. The model they followed in building their houses was a brick standing upright. / All the houses they built looked like bricks standing upright. 6.This they have converted into a thing of dingy clapboards, with a narrow, low-pitched roof. These brick-like houses were made of shabby,thin wooden boards and their roofs were narrow and had little slope. 7.When it has taken on the patina of the mills it is the color of an egg long past all hope or caring. When the brick is covered with the black soot of the mills it takes on the color of a rotten egg. 8.Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity. Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time. / Even in a steel town, old red bricks sti ll appear pleasing to the eye. 9.I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer. I have given W estmoreland the highest award for ugliness after having done a lot of hard work and research and after continuous praying. 10.They show grotesqueries of ugliness that, in retroapect, become almost diabolical. They show such fantastic and bizarre ugliness that, in looking back, they become almost fiendish and wicked./ When one looks back at these houses whose ugliness is so fantastic and bizarre, one feels they must be the work of the devil himself. 11.It is incredible that mere ignorance should have achieved such masterpieces of horror. It is hard to believe that people built such horrible houses just because they did not know what beautiful houses were like. 12.on certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly… People in certain strata of American society seem definite- ly to hunger after ugly things; while in other less Chris- tian strata, people seem to long for things beautiful. 13.they meet, in some unfathomable way, its obscure and unintelligible demands. These ugly designs, in some way that people cannot un- derstand, satisfy the hidden and unintelligible demands of this typ e of mind. 14….they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completely impossible penthouse, painted a staring yellow, on top of it. They put a penthouse on top of it, painted in a bright, conspicuous yellow color and thought it looked perfect but they only managed to make it absolutely intolerable. 15.out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. From the intermingling of different nationalities and races in the United States emerges the American race which hates beauty as strongly as it hates truth． 第八课 1….by the very fact of production, he has risen above the animal kingdom… Because of the fact itself that man produces, he has developed far beyond all other animals. 2.Work is also his liberator from nature, his creator as a social and independent being. Work also frees man from nature and makes him into a social being independent of nature. 3…all are expressions of the creative transformation of nature by man’s reason and skill. All the above-mentioned work shows how man has trans formed nature through his reason and skill. 4.There is no split of work and play, or work and culture. Therefore pleasure and work went together so did the cultural development of the worker go hand in hand with the work he was doing. 5.Work became the chief factor in a system of “innerwordly asceticiam,”an answer to man’s sense of aloneness and isolation. Work became the chief element in a system that preached an austere and self-denying way of life. Work was the only thing that brought relief to those who felt alone and isolat ed leading this kind of ascetic life. 6.Work has become alienated from the working person. In capitalist society the worker feels estranged from or hostile to the work he is doing. 7. Work is a means of getting money, not in itself a meaningful human activity. Work helps the worker to earn some money; and earning money only is an activity without much significance or pur pose. 8…a pay check is not enough to base one’s self-respect on. Just earning some money is not enough to make a worker have a proper respect of himself. 9…most industrial psychologists are mainly concerned with the manipulation of the worker’s psyche, Most industrial psychologists are mainly trying to manage and control the mind of the worker. 10.It is going to pay off in cold dollars and cents to management. Better relations with the public will yield larger profits to management. The management will earn larger profits if