阅读试题

Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. And he surely deserves additional praise: the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.

I say clever because anti-slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War. H. B. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.

Again and again, in the postwar years, Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race. Consider the most controversial, at least today, of Twain's novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn, Twain's most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struck them as rude. Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel "trash and suitable only for the slums (贫民窟)." More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped slave, and many occurences of the word nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often severely criticized, never appears in it.)

But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point. The novel is strongly anti-slavery. Jim's search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic. As J. Chadwick haspointed out, the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities, "the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual: Jim, thefather and the man."

There is much more. Twain's mystery novel Pudd'nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day. Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior (低等的) to whites, especially in intelligence, Twain's tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth. A slave gave birth to her master's baby and, for fear that the child should be sold South, switched him for the master's baby by his wife. The slave's lightskinned child was taken to be white and grewup with both the attitudes and the education of the slave-holding class. The master's wife's baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.

The point was difficult to miss: nurture (养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features ofthe black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example— were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.

Twain's racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called "nigger shows" in his youth—mostly with white menperforming in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggesthis keen awareness that they did not.

Was Twain a racist? Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim,may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than anyother novelist in the past century.

阅读试题

65. How do Twain's novels on slavery differ from Stowe's?

A. Twain was more willing to deal with racism.
B. Twain's attack on racism was much less open.
C. Twain's themes seemed to agree with plots.
D. Twain was openly concerned with racism.

66. Recent criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arose partly from its ______.

A. target readers at the bottom
B. anti-slavery attitude
C. rather impolite language
D. frequent use of "nigger"

67. What best proves Twain's anti-slavery stand according to the author?

A. Jim's search for his family was described in detail.
B. The slave's voice was first heard in American novels.
C. Jim grew up into a man and a father in the white culture.
D. Twain suspected that the slaves were less intelligent.

68. The story of two babies switched mainly indicates that ______.

A. slaves were forced to give up their babies to their masters
B. slaves' babies could pick up slave-holders' way of speaking
C. blacks' social position was shaped by how they were brought up

D. blacks were born with certain features of prejudice

69. What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 7 refer to?
A. The attacks. 　　
B. Slavery and prejudice.　　
C. White men. 　
D. The shows.

70. What does the author mainly argue for?

A. Twain had done more than his contemporary writers to attack racism.
B. Twain was an admirable figure comparable to Abraham Lincoln.
C. Twain's works had been banned on unreasonable grounds.

D. Twain's works should be read from a historical point of view.

参考译文

马克吐温被称为美国小说的创始人，他推广了聪明文学以抨击种族歧视，确实值得额外褒奖。

之所以说是聪明文学是因为饭奴隶制小说在内战前就已经是文学的重要组成部分了。斯托夫人的《汤姆叔叔的小屋》就是最著名的例子。这些早期的小说都是直指奴隶制。但也有少许列外，马克·吐温就是将他对奴隶制和偏见的攻击植入故事里，而故事表面看起来则是关于其他的事。通过描述这个故事，他把他的读者引入这场争辩之中。

战后，马克·吐温似乎不得不一次又一次地应对种族主义的挑战。至少现在马克·吐温的《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》仍是最受争议的小说。，被广泛阅读的马克·吐温的小说中只有几本书像《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》一样经常被踢下架。从前，人们讨厌这本书，因为人们认为它很粗鲁。吐温写道，那些禁止这本书的人认为这部小说是"垃圾，它只适合贫民窟"。最近这本书因为书中的人物，逃跑的黑奴吉姆而备受抨击，"黑鬼"这个词也频繁出现。(备受抨击的的"黑人吉姆"这个词从未出现过)。

但这样的攻击是愚蠢的，也是没有抓住重点的。这部小说强烈地反对奴隶制。吉姆从他被强行带走的蓄奴州开始搜寻家人的行为是一种英雄主义的行为。j . Chadwick指出，吉姆这个角色是美国小说中第一个承认奴隶有双重人格的，即"一个是生存于白人奴隶文化之中的愿望，另一个是作为个体存在的愿望，他可以是吉姆本人，也可以是父亲，是男人"。

这样的例子还有很多。吐温的悬疑小说《傻瓜威尔逊》对种族信仰发起了挑战，甚至是许多自由派的种族信仰。当人们接受黑人的智慧不及白人，尤其是才华不及白人时，那时吐温写了在孩子出生时将白人的孩子与黑人的孩子调换的故事。一个奴隶生下了她主人的孩子，生怕孩子被卖到南方去，于是就用自己的孩子换了他主人妻子的孩子。奴隶的浅肤色小孩被送到白人家庭，并在蓄奴的态度和教育思想中长大，而主人妻子的小孩被送到黑人家庭，并在以奴隶的态度和教育思想中长大。

有一点是明确的，那就是决定社会地位的关键是养育而不是本性。人们歧视的是奴隶本身的一些特点，比如说话的方式。吐温认为，这些特点正是奴隶制强加给奴隶的。

马克·吐温的种族论调并不完美。它依然存在令人不安的因素，例如，他在他的自传中用了很长的篇幅来讲述他在青年时期是多么喜爱被称作"黑鬼"的表演，而那些表演大多是由白人扮成黑人模样进行的，他说他看到他母亲笑话表演者时他很高心。但我们没有理由认为马克·吐温把这个表演看成是现实的写照。他经常攻击奴隶制和种族歧视表明他敏锐的意识到了他们没有意识到的事实。

马克·吐温是一个种族主义者吗？在21世纪，问这个问题就如同问林肯是不是一个种族主义者一样睿智。如果我们用当下的道德标准作为辨别的智慧来读过去作品，赏析旧的处事态度的话，我们会发现除了误，再无其他。林肯认为黑人要低于白人，只有战斗并且赢得战争，他们才能获得自由。吐温在一个蓄奴州长大，曾当过兵，创作了Jim这个形象，跟过去任何一个小说家相比，他也许更能提醒人们种族之间的不公并且唤醒他们的集体良知。

答案解析

65. B 考查细节理解。文章第二段提到内战前的小说一般都是直接地抨击奴隶制度，但是Mark Twain却把对奴隶制度和种族歧视的抨击放在其他方面。所以，他小说的不同在于他巧妙地进行抨击，因此B项正确。

66. D 考查细节理解。根据文章第三段最后一句可知，Nigger Jim这个词受到了人们的强烈批评，因此这个词没在以后的书里面出现过，故选D项。

67. C 考查细节理解。根据文章第四段的内容，尤其是第二句和最后一句可知，答案为C项。

68. C 考查推理判断。根据文章第六段第一句可知，社会地位是由养育的环境决定的，而不是生来注定的，因此C项正确。

69. D 考查代词指代。结合本段内容可知，这里是指Mark Twain认为这些表演不是社会现实的真实写照。

70. A 考查写作意图。文章主要讲述了Mark Twain在他所处的那个时代里是抨击奴隶制度的典型代表，因此A项正确。