高级英语下册课文1416课

1、lesson fourteenSaturday Night and Sunday Morningby Alan Sillitoe Text14-1 He sat by the canal fishing on a Sunday morning in spring, at an elbow where alders dipped over the water like old men on their last legs, pushed by young sturdy oaks from behind. He straightened his back, his fingers freeing

2、nylon line from a speedily revolving reel. Around him lay knapsack and jacket, an empty catch-net, his bicycle, and two tins of worms dug from the plot of garden at home before setting out. Sun was breaking through clouds, releasing a smell of earth to heaven. Birds sang. A soundless and minuscular

3、explosion of water caught his eye. He moved nearer the edge, stood up, and with a vigorous sweep of his arm, cast out the line. 14-2 Another solitary man was fishing further along the canal, but Arthur knew that they would leave each other in peace, would not even call out greetings . No one bothere

4、d you: you were a hunter, a dreamer, your own boss away from it all for a few hours on any day that the weather did not throw down its rain . Like the corporal in the army who said it was marvellous the things you thought about as you sat on the lavatory. Even better than that, it was marvellous the

5、 things that came to you in the tranquillity of fishing.14-3 He drank tea from the flask and ate a cheese sandwich, then sat back to watch the red and white float-up to its waist in water under the alder trees-and keep an eye always close to it for the sudden indication of a fortunate catch. For him

6、self, his own catch had been made, and he would have to wrestle with it for the rest of his life. Whenever you caught a fish, the fish caught you, in a way of speaking , and it was .the same with anything else you caught, like the measles or a woman. Everyone in the world was caught, somehow, one wa

7、y or another, and those that weren't were always on the way to it. As soon as you were born you were captured by fresh air that you screamed against the minute you came out . Then you were roped in by a factory, had a machine slung around your neck , and then you were hooked .up by the arse with

8、 a wife. Mostly you were like a fish: you swam about with freedom , thinking how good it was to be left alone, doing anything you wanted to do and caring about no one, when suddenly: SPLUTCH!-the big hook clapped itself into your mouth and you were caught. Without knowing what you were doing you had

9、 chewed off more than you could bite and had to stick with the same piece of bait for the rest of your life . It meant death for a fish; but for a man it might not be so bad. Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life, better than you could ever have thought possible before clamping

10、 your avid jaws down over the vital bait. Arthur knew he had not yet bitten, that he had really only licked the bait and. found it tasty, that he could still disengage his mouth from the nibbled morsel. But he did not want to do so. If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled before you,

11、that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be as dull as ditchwater. You could kill yourself by too much cunning. Even though bait meant trouble, you could not ignore it for ever. He laughed to think that he was full of bait already

12、, half-digested slop that had certainly given him a share of trouble, one way or another. 14-4 Watching the float so intently made him sleepy: he had been with Doreen until two the night before. They spoke of getting married in three months, by which time, Arthur said, they would have collected a go

13、od amount of money, nearly a hundred and fifty pounds, not counting income-tax rebate, which will probably bump it up to a couple of hundred. So they would be sitting pretty, Doreen replied, because Mrs. Greatton had already offered to let them stay with her for as long as they liked, paying half th

14、e rent. For she would be lonely when Chumley left. Arthur said he would be able to get on with Mrs. Greatton , because living there he would be the man of the house. And if there was any argument, they could get rooms somewhere. So it looked as though they'd be all right together, he thought, as

15、 long as a war didn't start, or trade slump and bring back the dole. As long as there wasn't a famine, a plague to sweep over England, an earthquake to crack it in two and collapse the city around them, or a bomb to drop and end the world with a big bang. But you couldn't concern yoursel

16、f too much with these things if you had plans and wanted to get something out of life that you had never had before. And that was a fact, he thought, chewing a piece of grass.14-5 He fixed the rod firmly against the bank and stood to stretch himself. He yawned widely, felt his legs weaken, then stre

17、ngthen, then relax, his tall figure marked against a background of curving canal and hedges and trees bordering it. He rubbed his hand over the rough features of his face , upwards over thick lips, grey eyes, low forehead ,short fair hair, then looked up at the mixture of grey cloud and blue patches

18、 of sky overhead . For some reason he smiled at what he saw, and turned to walk some yards along the towpath. Forgetting the stilled float in the water, he stopped to urinate against the bushes. While fastening his trousers, he saw the float in violent agitation, as if it were suddenly alive and wan

19、ted to leap out of the water,14-6 He ran back to the rod and began winding in the reel with steady movements . His hands worked smoothly and the line came in so quickly that it did not seem to be moving except on the reel itself where the nylon thread grew in thickness and breadth, where he evened i

20、t out with his thumb so that it would not clog at a vital moment . The fish came out of the water, flashing and struggling on the end of the line, and he grasped it firmly in his hand to take the hook from its mouth. He looked into its glass-grey eye, at the brown pupil whose fear expressed all the

21、life that it had yet lived, and all its fear of the death that now threatened it. In its eye he saw the green gloom of willow-sleeved canals in cool decay, an eye filled with panic and concern for the remaining veins of life that circled like a silent whirlpool around it. Where do fishes go when the

22、y die? he wondered. The glow of long-remembered lives was mirrored in its eyes, and the memory of cunning curves executed in the moving shadows from reed to reed as it scattered the smaller fry and was itself chased by bigger fish was also pictured there. Arthur felt mobile waves of hope running the

23、 length of its squamous body from head to tail. He removed the hook, and threw it back into the water. He watched it flash away and disappear.14-7 One more chance, he said to himself; but if you or any of your pals come back to the bait, it's curtains for ' em . With float bobbing before him

24、 once more he sat down to wait. This time it was war, and he wanted fish to take home, either to cook in the pan or feed to the cat. It's trouble for you and trouble for me, and all over a piece of bait, The fattest worm of the lot is fastened to the hook, so don't grumble when you feel that

25、 point sticking to your chops.14-8 And trouble for me it'll be, fighting every day until I die. Why do they make soldiers out of us when we're fighting up to the hilt as it is? Fighting with mothers and wives, landlords and gaffers, coppers, army, government. If it's not one thing it'

26、;s another, apart from the work we have to do and the way we spend our wages. There's bound to be trouble in store for me every day of my life, because trouble it's always been and always will be. Born drunk and married blind, misbegotten into a strange and crazy world, dragged up through th

27、e dole and into the war with a gas-mask on your clock, and the sirens rattling into you every night while you rot with scabies in an air-raid shelter. Slung into khaki at eighteen, and when they let you out, you sweat again in a factory, grabbing for an extra pint, doing women at the weekend and get

28、ting to know whose husbands are on the night-shift, working with rotten guts and an aching spine , and nothing for it but money to drag you back there every Monday morning .14-9 Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken, and if you know that the big wide

29、 world hasn't heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won't be long now. 14-10 The float bobbed more violently than before and, with a grin on his face, he began to wind in the reel.Lesson Fifteen Is America Falling Apart? 15-1 I am back in Bracciano, a castellated town about 13

30、 miles north of Rome, after a year in New Jersey. I find the Italian Government still unstable, gasoline more expensive than anywhere in the world, butchers and bank clerks and tobacconists ready to go on strike at the drop of a hat, neo-fascists at their dirty work, the hammer and sickle painted on

31、 the rumps of public statues, a thousand-lira note (officially worth about $1.63) shrunk to the slightness of a dollar bill. 15-2 Nevertheless, it's delightful to be back. People are underpaid but they go through an act of liking their work, the open markets are luscious with esculent color , th

32、e community is important than the state, the human condition is humorously accepted. The northern wind blows viciously today, and there's no central heating to turn on, but it will be pleasant when the wind drops. The two television channels are inadequate, but next Wednesday's return of an

33、old Western is something to look forward to. Manifold consumption isn't important here. The quality of life has nothing to do with the quantity of brand names. What matters is talk, family, cheap wine in the open air, the wresting of minimal sweetness out of the long-known bitterness of living .

34、 I was spoiled in New Jersey.15-3 In New Jersey, I never had to shiver by a fire that wouldn't draw, or go without canned food . America made me develop new appetites in order to make proper use of the supermarket. A character in Evelyn Waugh's Put out More Flags said that the difference bet

35、ween prewar and postwar life was that, prewar, if one thing went wrong the day was ruined; postwar, if one thing went right the day would be made. America is a prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong. Hence the neurosis, despair, the Kafka feeling that the whole marvelou

36、s fabric of American life is coming apart at the seams. 15-4 Let us stay for a while on this subject of consumption. American individualism, on the face of it an admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itself in independence of the community. You don't share things in common; you have your own

37、things. A family's strength is signalized by its possessions. Herein lies a paradox. For the desire for possessions must eventually mean dependence on possessions. Freedom is slavery. Once let the acquisitive instinct burgeon, and there are ruggedly individual forces only too ready to make it co

38、me to full and monstrous blossom. New appetites are invented; what to the European are bizarre luxuries become, to the American, plain necessities. 15-5 During my year's stay in New Jersey I let my appetite flower into full Americanism except for one thing. I did not possess an automobile. This

39、self-elected deprivation was a way into the nastier side of the consumer society. Where private ownership prevails, public amenities decay or are prevented from coming into being. The rundown rail services of America are something I try, vainly, to forget. The nightmare of filth, outside and in, tha

40、t enfolds the trip from Springfield, Mass., to Grand Central Station would not be accepted in backward Europe. But far worse is the nightmare of travel in and around Los Angeles, where public transport does not exist and people are literally choking to death in their exhaust fumes . This is part of

41、the price of individual ownership.15-6 But if the car owner can ignore the lack of public transport, he can hardly ignore the decay of services in general. His car needs mechanics, and mechanics grow more expensive and less efficient. The gadgets in the home are cheaper to replace than repair. The m

42、ore efficiently self-contained the home seems to be, the more dependent it is on the great impersonal corporations, as well as a diminishing army of servitors. Skills at the lowest level have to be wooed slavishly and exorbitantly rewarded. Plumbers will not come. Nor, at the higher level, will doct

43、ors. And doctors and dentists know their scarcity value and behave accordingly .15-7 Americans are at last realizing that the acquisition of goods is not the whole of life. Consumption, on one level, is turning insipid, especially as the quality of the goods seems to be deteriorating. Planned obsole

44、scence is not conducive to pride in workmanship. On another level, consumption is turning sour . There is a growing guilt about the masses of discarded junk- -rusting automobiles and refrigerators and washing machines and dehumidifiers that it is uneconomical to recycle. Indestructible plastic hasn&

45、#39;t even the grace to undergo chemical change . America, the world's biggest consumer, is the world's biggest polluter. Awareness of this is a kind of redemptive grace, but it has not led to repentance and a revolution in consumer habits. Citizens of Los Angeles are horrified by the daily

46、pall of golden smog, but they don't noticeably clamor for a decrease in the number of owner-vehicles. There is no worse neurosis than that which derives from a consciousness of guilt and an inability to reform .15-8 It would be unnecessary for me to list those areas in which thoughtful Americans

47、 feel that collapse is coming. It is enough for me to concentrate on education. America has always despised its teachers and, as a consequence, it has been granted the teachers it deserves . The quality of first-grade education that my son received, in a New Jersey town noted for the excellence of i

48、ts public schools, could not, I suppose, be faulted on the level of dogged conscientiousness. The teachers worked rigidly from the approved rigidly programed primers. But there seemed to be no spark, no daring, no madness, no readiness to engage the individual child's mind as anything other than

49、 raw material for statistical reductions. The fear of being unorthodox is rooted in the American teacher's soul; you can be fired for treading the path of experimental enterprises.15-9 I know that American technical genius, and most of all the moon landing, seems to give the lie to too summary a

50、 condemnation of the educational system , but there is more to education than the segmental equipping of the mind. There is that transmission of the value of the past as a force still miraculously fertile and moving mostly absent from American education at all levels.15-10 Of course, America was bui

51、lt on a rejection of the past. Even the basic Christianity which was brought to the continent in 1620 was of a novel and bizarre kind . And now America, filling in the vacuum left by the liquefied British Empire, has the task of showing the best thing to the rest of the world. The best thing can onl

52、y be money-making and consumption for its own sake. In the name of this ghastly creed the jungle must be defoliated .15-11 No wonder thoughtful Americans feel guilty and want to take all the blame they can find. "What do Europeans really think of us?" is a common question at parties. The e

53、xpected answer is: "They think you're a load of decadent, gross-lipped, potbellied, callous, overbearing neo-imperialists." But the fact is that such an answer, however much desired, would not be an honest one. Europeans think more highly of Americans now than they ever did. Let me exp

54、lain why.15-12 When Europe had sunk to the level of sewer, America became the golden dream, the Eden where innocence could be recovered . Original sin was the monopoly of that dirty continent over there. In America, progress was possible, and the wrongs committed against the Indians, the wildlife, t

55、he land itself, could be explained away in terms of the rational control of environment necessary for the building of a New Jerusalem. Morally there were only right and wrong; evil had no place in America.15-13 At last, with the Vietnam War, Americans are beginning to realize that they are subject t

56、o original sin as much as Europeans are. Some things the massive crime figures, for instance can now be explained only in terms of absolute evil. America is no longer Europe's daughter nor her rich stepmother; she is Europe's sister; The agony that America is undergoing is not to be associat

57、ed with breakdown as much as with the parturition of self-knowledge. 15-14 It has been assumed that the youth of America has been in the vanguard of the discovery of both the disease and the cure. The various escapist movements, however, have committed the gross error of assuming that original sin r

58、ested with their elders, their rulers, and that they themselves could manifest their essential innocence by building little neo-Edens. The drug culture could confirm that the paradisal vision was available to all who sought it. But instant ecstasy has to be purchased, like any other commodity, and,

59、in economic terms, that passive life involves parasitism. Practically all of the crime I encountered in New York was a preying of the opium-eaters on the working community. There has to be the snake in paradise. You can't escape the heritage of human evil by building communes, usually on an agro

60、nomic ignorance that does violence to life . The American young are well-meaning but misguided, and must not themselves be taken as guides.15-15 The guides, as always, lie among the writers and artists. And Americans ought to note that, however things may seem to be falling apart, arts and the humane scholarship are flourishing here. I'm not suggesting that writer