美国文学选读部分习题答案归纳

Unit2 Edgar Allan Poe

1) Who is the narrator? What wrong does he want to redress?

It is Montresor. Fortunato has given Montresor thousands of injuries that he has to bear before he has this opportunity of taking revenge.

2) What is the pretext Montresor uses to lure Fortunado to his wine cellar?

He claims that he has just got a cask of Amontilado and stores it in the wine cellar before he may find a connoisseur to testify to its authenticity.

3) What happens to Fortunado in the end?

The deceived Fortunado is killed because of his inability of getting out of the catacomb.

4) Describe briefly how Poe characterizes Mortresor and Fortunado as contrasts.

Poe characterizes Mortresor and Fortunado as seemingly contrasting characters chiefly by presenting their identical habit in wine and their different manners towards each other, but actually he intends to show some similarly defective aspects in their nature. The similarity in their nature is also suggested by their names as synonyms in Italian: Mortresor means “fortune” while Fortunado “treasure”. Their defective nature is highlighted when the revenger Mortresor, who is fully prepared on psychological and operating levels, throws the hardly prepared but totally deceived wrong-doer Fortunado into the deep and damp catacomb and blocks up its entrance with huge rocks.

Lecture 4 Nathaniel Hawthorne

Questions :1.Why is the prison the setting of Chapter 1 ?

No matter how optimistic the founders of new colonies may be, they are quick to establish a prison and a cemetery in their “Utopia,” for they know that misbehavior, evil, and death are unavoidable. This belief fits into the larger Puritan doctrine, which puts heavy emphasis on the idea of original sin—the notion that all people are born sinners because of the initial transgressions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. he is therefore using the prison building to represent the crime and the punishment which are aspect of civilized life

What is the implication of the description of the roses?

The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast man's activities. The narrator suggests that roses offer a reminder of Nature's kindness to the condemned; for his tale, he says, it will provide either a “sweet moral blossom” or else some relief in the face of unrelenting sorrow and gloom.

2.Describe the appearance of Hester Prynne and the attitude of the people towards her.

The second paragraph on page 30.The crowd in front of the jail is a mixture of men and women, all maintaining severe looks of disapproval. Several of the women begin to discuss Hester Prynne, and they soon vow that Hester would not have received such a light sentence for her crime if they had been the judges. One woman, the ugliest of the group, goes so far as to advocate death for Hester. 3.What has happened to Hester?

As a young woman, Hester married an elderly scholar, Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live.

While waiting for him, she had an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl.

The scarlet letter is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy.

Why does she make the embroidery of the letter A so elaborate?

It seems to declare that she is proud, rather than ashamed, of her sin. In reality, however, Hester simply accepts the “sin” and its s ymbol as part of herself, just as she accepts her child. And although she can hardly believe her present “realities,” she takes them as they are rather than resisting them or trying to atone for them.

How does this tell us about her character?

Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure.

Unit 5 Herman Melville

1. What are the stories Ismael tells about Moby Dick?

Ishmael compares the legend of Moby Dick to his experience of the whale.

He notes that sperm whale attacks have increased recently and that superstitious sailors have come to regard these attacks as having an intelligent, even supernatural origin.

In particular, wild rumors about Moby Dick circulate among whalemen, suggesting that he can be in more than one place at the same time and that he is immortal. Ishmael remarks that even the wildest of rumors usually contains some truth.

Whales, for instance, have been known to travel with remarkable speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific; thus, it is possible for a whale to be caught in the Pacific with the harpoons of a Greenland ship in it.

Moby Dick, who has defied capture numerous times, exhibits an “intelligent malignity”（狠毒）in his attacks on men

2. Why does Ahab react so violently against the white whale?

First, he lost one of his legs because of the white whale.

Second,He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale，because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil.

Ishmael suggests that Ahab is “crazy”and call him “a raving lunatic.” Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

Ishmael describes Ahab as mad in his narration, and it does indeed seem mad to try to fight the forces of nature or God.

3. What narrative features can you find in the selected chapter?

In the selected charpter, Melville employed the technique of multiple view of his narrative to portray Moby Dick to achieve the effect of ambiguity and let readers judge the meaning.