Unit7TheChaserTeachingplan综合教程三

Unit 7 The Chaser
Teaching Points
By the end of this unit, students are supposed to
1)grasp the author’s purpose of writing and make clear the structure of the whole passage
through an intensive reading of Text I The chaser.
2)comprehend the topic sentences in Text I thoroughly and be able to paraphrase them.
3)get a list of new words and structures and use them freely in conversation and writing.
Topics for discussion
1)Do you believe love can be fostered? How can you lure one into love with you?
2)What is likely to happen when a couple no longer love each other?
Cultural Background
1. Proposal of Marriage
●The proposal of marriage is an event where one person in a relationship asks for the other's hand in
marriage.
●If accepted, it marks the initiation of engagement.
●It often has a ritual quality, sometimes involving the presentation of an engagement ring and a
formalize d asking of a question such as “Will you marry me?”
●Often the proposal is a surprise.
●In many Western cultures, the tradition has been for the man to propose to the woman.
2. Engagement
●An engagement is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage –
which may be lengthy or trivial.
●During this period, a couple is said to be affianced, betrothed, engaged to be married, or simply
engaged.
●Future brides and grooms are often referred to as fiancée or fiancés respectively (from the French
word “fiancé”).
●The duration of the courtship varies vastly.
●Long engagements were once common in formal arranged marriages.
●In 2007, the average engagement time in the United States was 17 months, but the figure around the
world varies greatly depending on culture and customs.
Text I
The Chaser
John Collier
Global Reading
I. Text Analysis
The short story is a fable of love with a strong sarcastic tone. The protagonist, Alan Austen, wants to find an easy solution to the problem of love by purchasing a love potion. However，it’s not the love potion that the old man intends to sell primarily, but “life cleaner”.
The theme of “The Chaser” is the cynicism of experience, portrayed on a field of Alan’s y outhful naivety and the old man’s pessimistic certainty.
The title of this short story is somehow a pun. “A chaser” can be a person that pursues someone like in “a woman chaser”. In addition, it can refer to a weaker alcoholic drink taken after a strong one. A whisky, like the potion, intoxicates. A beer chaser, like the “life cleaner”, mollifies the harshness of the spirits. The potion and the poison go together like a strong alcoholic drink and a chaser.
.
II. Structural Analysis
This short story, which combines elements of horror and love, is built almost entirely through dialogue between a young man, Alan Austen, who is deeply in love and wants to possess his lover entirely, and an unnamed old man who believes in a life free of romantic involvement.
In “The Chaser” John Collier uses:
●the dramatic irony of the title to initialize a cynical landscape;
●and the understatement of the ending to enclose the cynical world of the old man, a world which
Alan is entering.
Paragraph 1: In this part, the protagonist, Alan Austen, has been introduced.
Paragraphs 2-12: The old man is trying to sell his mixture.
Paragraphs 13-45: Austen got to know about the love potion and in the end bought it.
Detailed Reading
Questions
1. What is the image of Alan Austen in the first part? (Paragraph 1)
Alan Austen is depicted as a timi d, skeptical and hesitant character. Through descriptions like “as nervous as a kitten,” “peering about for a long time on the dim hallway”, the writer creates a sense of apprehension.
2. Why do you think the old man told Austen about the life-cleaner before selling the love potion? (Paragraph 7)
The sophisticated old man had encountered many young men who had been in the grip of romantic desire before, but who eventually got tired of the possessive love they had experienced. He knew for sure that Austen’s possessive love wouldn’t last long. It would eventually bore and repel him. He expected that when his enthusiastic passion changed into hatred, Austen would come to him again, because he had already seen those disillusioned customers return to buy the “chaser” so that they could be free from the women for whom they had previously bought the love potion.
3. What is the implied meaning of the old man’s remark, “Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion” (Paragraph 13)? What the old man means is that a young man who falls in love one-sidedly is seldom rich enough to win a girl’s heart; if he were rich enough, it would be much easier for him to win the girl’s hand. His words imply that money is one of the crucial factors for love. If a man is not rich, he can rarely expect to be loved by a girl.
4. What is Austen’s understanding of love? (Paragraph s 23-32)
Austen was filled with illusions and unrealistic expectations of love. To him, love meant the entire possession of the lover. When the old man talked about the magic effect of the love potion and described the expectant possessive love, Austen cried “That is love!”, which suggests that he was overwhelmed with joy.
5. What does the old man’s remark in Paragraph 39 “… one has to be older than you are, to indulge in that sort of thing” mean?
Young people tend to be over-passionate for love, sometimes senselessly and irrationally, while the old, just like the old man who sells the mixtures, would take a cool and sensible, sometimes even cynical attitude toward love.
Text II
Young Men and Elderly Men
Aristotle
A Lead-in Question
Considering its time-honored history, Chinese culture tends to be compared to an old man in his eighties or even nineties. And it is very intriguing to find out that Chinese people as a whole are tolerant, practical, lack courage to take risks, which just resemble the characters of the elderly proposed by Aristotle in his Youth and Old Age. What do you think of Chinese people’s national character?
Main idea
Notes
1.About the author and the text: Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of
Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. The text Youth and Old Age is an excerpt from Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Book II, Chapter 12).
2.Pittacus’ remark about Amphiaraus (Paragraph 1): Pittacus (640-568 BC) was the son of Hyrradius
and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. He was a native of Mytilene and the Mytilenaean general who, with his army, was victorious in the battle against the Athenians and their commander Phrynon. In consequence of this victory the Mytilenaeans held Pittacus in the greatest honour and presented the supreme power into his hands. After ten years of reign he resigned his position and the city and constitution were brought into good order. Some authors mention that he had a son called Tyrrhaeus.
The legend says that his son was killed and when the murderer was brought before Pittacus, he dismissed the man, saying, "Pardon is better than repentance." Of this matter, Heraclitus says that he had got the murderer into his power and then he released him, saying, "Pardon is better than punishment."
In Greek mythology, Amphiaraus was the son of Oecles and Hypermnestra, and husband of Eriphyle. Amphiaraus was the King of Argos along with Adrastus — the brother of Amphiaraus' wife, Eriphyle — and Iphis. Amphiaraus was a seer, and greatly honored in his time. Both Zeus and Apollo favored him, and Zeus gave him his oracular talent. In the generation before the Trojan War, Amphiaraos was one of the heroes present at the Calydonian Boar Hunt.
3.Chilon’s precept (Paragraph 1): Chilon of Sparta was a Lacedaemonian, son of Damagetus and one
of the Seven Sages of Greece. He was elected an ephor in Sparta in 556/5 BC. It is recorded that he composed verses in elegiac metre to the number of two hundred. Chilon was also the first person who introduced the custom of joining the ephors to the kings as their counselors, though Satyrus attributes this institution to Lycurgus Chilon is said to have helped to overthrow the tyranny at Sicyon, which became a spartan ally. He is also credited with the change in Spartan policy leading tot the development of the Peloponnesian League in the sixth century BC. Chilon's teachings flourished around the beginning of the 6th century B.C. A legend says that he died of joy in the arms of his son, who had just gained a prize at the Olympic games. His sayings include “Nothing in Excess”, which is the precept that Aristotle refers to.
4.utility (Paragraph 2): Usefulness, or gain as referred to above:“I have a lways doubted the utility of
these conferences on disarmament” (Winston S. Churchill).
Additional Notes
1. They are sanguine; nature warms their blood as though with excess of wine (Paragraph 1): They are
cheerful and literally red-faced, as if they have drunk too much wine. Literally, sanguine refers to a reddish, often tending to brown, color of chalk used in drawing.
2. past their prime (Paragraph 2): past the best of one’s life. The prime, or the prime time, is the age of
ideal physical perfection and intellectual vigor.
3. hint of Bias (Paragraph 2): Bias is a Greek philosopher, and considered the wisest of all the Seven Sages of Greece. His famous sayings include: “All men are wicked.”“Choose the course which you adopt with deliberation; but when you have adopted it, then persevere in it with firmness." "Cherish wisdom as a means of traveling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession.”
Questions for Discussion
1．How does Aristotle define expectation and memory respectively? How do you interpret expectation and memory?
2. How are two types of people, the first type being those driven by reasoning and the other type motivated by moral goodness, normally respond to circumstances?
3. What is the possible chief cause behind hesitation and indecision of the elderly?
4. What special characteristics are the elderly apt to display in actualities?
Key to Questions for Discussion
1. Aristotle holds that a young man is a man of expectation, for he has a long future ahead of him, and an elderly man is a man of memory, for he has a long past behind him. So a young man tends to be confident, for a bright and promising future is always inspiring and an elderly is likely to be cautious, for he has gone through many ups and downs in life. A young man is less burdened, for he is not burdened with too many memories, and an elderly man is liable to be more burdened, for he has too many memories to indulge in.
A young man is apt to commit errors and run into blunders, for he is not a dear teacher of rich experiences himself and an elderly man is less liable to commit grave mistakes, for he must have learnt so many lessons in life.
2. Those who like to reason tend to be deep and sophisticated, so they are normally slow and cautious in their response to circumstances, for they take into careful account what consequences their response may lead to while those who give top priorities to moral goodness tend to be quick in their response to circumstances for anything noble and great can get their positive response promptly and anything lowly and ignoble can cause their negative response in no time.
3. The elderly might have experienced many frustrations in life, many of which were beyond their expectation. As a result, they are less sure about life. Therefore, when faced with a choice in life, they tend to show hesitation and indecision.
4. The elderly are engaged more in contemplation rather than action, for they prefer to reason than to feel; they are more cynical and distrustful, for they have seen too often the worse side of human nature; they are moderate in life attitude, so they display neither intense love nor intense hate in normal circumstances.
Memorable Quotes
About Pierre Corneille, Elbert Hubbard and William Shakespeare
Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) has been called “the founder of French tragedy” and he was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine.
Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. He was an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement and is, perhaps, most famous for his essay A Message to Garcia.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest
writer in the English l anguage and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.。