英美文学问答题

An American Tragedy

1. Discuss the character of Clyde Griffiths.

The novel's main character, Clyde is driven all his life in pursuit of his idea of the American dream. He is materialistic and pleasure-seeking, and he lacks any strong moral center. He is willing to lie and to indulge in unethical and illegal behavior in pursuit of his goals, and he repeatedly runs from difficulties, especially those he creates for himself. For Clyde, there is no clear line between reality and fantasy, right and wrong. To escape his sordid life, he daydreams of wealth and luxury. To live with his acts of cowardice, he rationalizes them. So his character is decided by his pursuit.

2.What were the root causes which led to Clyde's destruction

The original causes of Clyde's tragedy are the evil capitalist social system. In general, his destruction is decided by American dream.

Roberta?s tragedy was very great important significant. It showed in true history that American society ruined the youth people. As we know in American society at that time, the individualism, money worship and American Dream were very prevalent in America. The American Dream was based on the assumption that each person, no matter what his origins are, could succeed in life in the sole basic of his or her own skill and effort.

Naturalism is the brief writing style that man is shaped of hereditary and environment force beyond his control. In particular, naturalism is the brief that man?s inner sense of willingness toward a good or toward an evil is an illusion merely.Thus, for the naturalist it makes no praise the action, they are only doing what comes naturally to them. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for being too blunt.

The Long Way Out

1.In the opening paragraph the narrator says,"It(the story) seemed to have nothing to do with the tortures long ago." Does he really mean it, or is it ironic. It is ironic. Mrs King has spilt personality. When she become well enough so that she could take a experimental trip with her husband there was a general interest in the center. Unfortunately, her husband's car was hit by a truck on his way from the city and died. The doctors and nurses try to varnish over the truth with a lie. Mrs King Had been living in a state of being cheated. Though Mrs King, the author reveal the real life of ordinary life.

Fitzgerald's fiction deals with the bankruptcy of the American Dream, which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists' personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic vision of life and the sordid reality. American Dream is a popular belief that people can achieve success, whether it is wealth, fame or love through honest hard working in a new world of liberty, equality, chances and promises. The American Dream was bankrupt in the sense that the wealthy people were spiritually disorientated and morally corrupted. The fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of American Dream.

1.Why, in the second paragraph, does the narrator bring in the Declaration of Independence?

The Declaration of Independence which declared…that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certainunalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.? Thedeclaration brought to America a new sense of democratic freedom and established a notion of a society in which anything was possible. An American dream was born; a dream that boasted democracy, equality, prosperity and freedom. America became a land

of opportunity where every man had power over his own destiny.But, in fact, all men are not equal

2.In the last paragraph the narrator says,"It is not unhappy life as far as we know..."Is it really?Or does it only add to our sense of sadness and horror?

It is not really.It doesn't add to our sense of sadness and horror. Maybe it seems an unhappy life. The author display the loneliness and misery of modern life.He conveys the idea that,"Money can't buy happiness. People just live in a blind life and life is indeed dark. The novel reflects that author's recognition that one's desire for happiness does not insure one's being so and that pursuit of pleasure may only cover a lot of pain. The novel reveals the falseness of ideals and moves toward disillusion.

The Hairy Ape

1.Disscuss the theme of The Hairy Ape

The resounding theme of The Hairy Ape is the effect of industrialization and technological progress on the worker. Industrialization has reduced the human worker into a machine. The men are programmed to do one task, are turned on and off by whistles, and are not required to think independently.

Yank-The play's protagonist, works as a Fireman on a Transatlantic Ocean Liner. The play follows his quest to find a sense of belonging in modern industrial society. Yank is isolated from the outworld and try to find friendship and identify.Yank is rejected by all facets of society: his fellow firemen, Mildred, the street goers of 5th Ave, and finally the ape in the zoo.Yank's inability to think not only reveals his regression to a lower animal form, but also renders him unable to adapt to or defend himself in the world beyond the ship.

The Hairy Ape displays O'Neill's social concern for the oppressed industrial working class. Despite demonstrating in The Hairy Ape his clear belief that the capitalist system persecuted the working man, O'Neill is critical of a socialist movement that can't fulfill individual needs or solve unique problems.

The industrial environment is presented as toxic and dehumanizing; the world of the rich, superficial and dehumanized. Yank has also been interpreted as representative of the human condition, alienated from nature by his isolated consciousness, unable to find belonging in any social group or environment.Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.

2.What are the characteristics of the language used in the play? Rough English

Yank's idiosyncratic speech, characterized by chopped and mangled words eliminate the possibility of Yank's successes or acceptance in a world or class other than his own. His deformed language makes real communication impossible. Ann Massa in "Intention and Effect in The Hairy Ape" puts it quite beautifully, "Yank can only break the bounds of his vocabulary and his style in the same violent and ultimately frustrated way that he bends the bars of his cell he can't break the mould of the apparently flexible yet imprisoning medium that is language and that is life." Yank's speech defines his class and place in society—rigid, unchanging and binding.

A Farewell To Arms

1.What in your view is the theme of the novel?

A Farewell To Arms tells of a tragic wartime love affair between an ambulance driver and an English nurse. There are several themes in the novel.

The Theme of War: Hemingway does not portray war as something glorious and there is negative portrayal of war in his novel, and people in the novel hate the war. The theme of love:These two lovers were so absorbed in each other that they needed no one else in their life. Hen ry suffered a lot from Catherine?s death and lost his only hope.

The Theme of Identity:Henry?s strong sense of alienation helps creates a sense of detachment in his descriptions of events and conversations. However, one of the great tragedies in the book is that Henry loses this piece of identity when Catherine dies. The Theme of Individualism:Most of the characters in the novel are tired of war. As a result, Henry turns away from ideals, such as patriotism, that create nations and chooses to honor the individual people, places, and times.

The Theme of Patriotism:The concept of war is preceded by the idea of patriotism. The love of country and the willingness to sacrifice all for one?s country is the patriot?s reason for joining the battle.

Themes: The main theme in A Farewell to Arms is that war kills us in more ways than one. It can wound us in battle, but it can scar us in sometimes deeper ways. It causes betrayal, like the paranoid Italians turning on Frederick because he spoke with a foreign accent. It can even trouble us from afar, as in the case of Catherine, how she was haunted by her long-time love's death in the war, several years after he was gone. War can touch us in many more ways than any other thing of human making. Modernist literature: Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.

2.Apart from the frequent dialogues, there are also instances of "interior monologue," or description of "the stream of consciousness." Discuss the author's use of this device.

Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms uses nature to structure the novel and provide symbols that replace human emotions. Nature serves as a basic structure for the plot and the actions that occur. It also emerges as a source of symbols that replace human sentiment or feelings. Characters die and there is no mention of sadness or pain. Instead, Hemingway writes that it is raining, that it is autumn, or that peace has occurred when people are still at war. The replacement of emotions with symbols allows Hemingway to frequently understate what is really going on in the action. He further uses symbols to completely omit references to sentiments or feelings. Not only symbols, but also individual words, come to be used in this way. This undermines the use of technical language throughout the novel and causes the breakdown of that language. Thus, symbols and words provide a basis for the structure of the novel and for the loss of the technical language. The wet world is the exact opposite, the army loses and is forced to retreat and Henry loses Catherine. The natural world thereby provides the setting within which Henry's personal and military experiences can take place. Natural changes from dryness to wetness are paralleled in the plot by both Catherine's pregnancy and the corrupt horse races.

Death of A salesman

https://www.360docs.net/doc/f616761179.html,ler is a playwright concerned about social problems. What social problems are revealed in the play?What are the causes of the tragedy of the Loman family?

①American dream.The American Dream consists of a genuine and determined belief that in America, all things are possible to all men, regardless of birth or wealth; if you work hard enough you will achieve everything.

The biggest issue this play imitates is peer pressure. Willy's pressure on the kids is like pressure from friends to do things you normally wouldn't do. Our culture thrives on peer pressure. Either way, the play shows the effects of society's pressure on normal people. Willy is just a man who wanted to be well off. To him, this meant rich and successful. Many people are just like Willy; they have to be well liked because to them, that's what success is.

②The tragedy of the Loman family lies in his excessive fanatic in American Dream which eroded his soul and distorted his personality. The process of his failure was the period in which American Dream disillusioned.Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream—that a “well liked” and “personally attractive” man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Oddly, his fixation with the superficial qualities of attractiveness and likeability is at odds with a more gritty, more rewarding understanding of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaint as the key to su ccess. Willy?s blind faith in his stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life.

2.Discuss the characters of the play.

Willy Loman is a gregarious, mercurial man with powerful aspirations to success. However, after thirty-five years working as a traveling salesman throughout New England, Willy Loman feels defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life. Although he has a dutiful wife, his relationship with his oldest son, Biff, is strained by Biff's continual failures.

As a salesman, Willy Loman focuses on personal details over actual measures of success, believing that it is personality and not high returns that garner success in the business world.

Biff has been a continual failure, stealing and even spending time in jail. Despite his failures and anger toward his father, Biff still has great concern for what his father thinks of him, and the conflict between the two characters drives the narrative of the play.

Linda Loman is the one person who supports Willy Loman, despite his often reprehensible treatment of her. She is a woman who has aged greatly because of her difficult life with her husband, whose hallucinations and erratic behavior she contends with alone. She is the moral center of the play, occasionally stern and not afraid to confront her sons about their poor treatment of their father.

Happy Loman is seemingly content and successful, with a steady career and none of the obvious marks of failure that his older brother displays. Happy, however, is not

content with his more stable life, because he has never risked failure or striven for any real measure of success. Happy is a compulsive womanizer who treats women purely as sex objects and has little respect for the many women whom he seduces.

象征：

1.推销员之死：

Seeds represent for Willy the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor, both as a salesman and a father. His desperate, nocturnal attempt to grow vegetables signifies his shame about barely being able to put food on the table and having nothing to leave his children when he passes. The seeds also symbolize Willy?s sense of failure with Biff. Despite the American Dream?s formula for success, which Willy considers infallible, Wil ly?s efforts to cultivate and nurture Biff went awry. Diamonds：To Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of one?s labor (and life) and the ability to pass material goods on to one?s offspring, two things that Willy desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune, symbolize Willy?s failure as a salesman. Despite Willy?s belief in the American Dream, a belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alask a, the Dream?s promise of financial security has eluded Willy. Linda’s and The Woman’s Stockings

Stockings assume a metaphorical weight as the symbol of betrayal and sexual infidelity. New stockings are important for both Willy?s pride in being financial ly successful and thus able to provide for his family and for Willy?s ability to ease his guilt about, and suppress the memory of, his betrayal of Linda and Biff.

2.永别了武器：Rain

Rain In the novel, rain serves as a powerful symbol of the inevitable disintegration of any type of pleasure or love in life. Just as rain floods a beautiful day and darkens a blue sky, it turns all that is joyful and even hopeful into a muddy misery. It is the emblem of sterility, the mark of a barren life doomed for destruction. Catherine instills the dismal weather with meaning while she and Henry are lying in bed listening to the storm outside.

Catherine’s Hair：In the early, easy days of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in bed, Catherine takes down her hair and lets it cascade around Henry?s head. The tumble of hair reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent or behind a waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of the couple?s isolation from the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to secure a blissful seclusion, believing themselves protected by something as delicate as hair.

1. The Lost Generation

After the First World War, some young writers voluntarily left America and settled in Paris, and others who stayed behind felt themselves to be exiles in spirit. All of them were “outsiders” who observed America society and culture objectively, from distance and tried to create new types of writing. They shunned the false idea of success put forth by the social system. Hemingway and Pound have been the representatives of such writers.

2. Modernist Literature

Modernist literature is formed by many different literary schools such as stream of consciousness. The common tendencies of them are the suspicion and denial of the western civilization, the exploration into the inner world and unconsciousness of men and the innovation and experiment of artistic technique. Modernists feel no connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.

3. Symbol

A symbol is a person, place, or thing comes to represent an abstract idea or concept -- it is anything that stands for something beyond itself.

4. American Naturalism:

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was depicted as a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for being too blunt.

5. Imagism

Imagism is the name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.

6. The Black Literature ( Afro-American Literature )

In the 40?s of 20th century , the literary works by Negroes was no longer ignored and now Afro-American literature with some famous black writers as Langston Hughes with his novel Native Son, which forces public attention on to the problems of black Americans. Gradually, the black literature has become an important part of American Literature.

7. Stream of Consciousness

Definition: Stream of consciousness is characterized by a flow of thoughts and images, which may not always appear to have a coherent structure or cohesion. The plot line may weave in and out of time and place, carrying the reader through the life span of a character or further along a timeline to incorporate the lives (and thoughts) of characters from other time periods.

Writers who create stream-of-consciousness works of literature focus on the emotional and psychological processes that are taking place in the minds of one or more characters. Important character traits are revealed through an exploration of

what is going on in the mind.

Also Known As: Interior Monologue

Stream of Consciousness is a narrative technique that presents thoughts as if they were coming directly from a character?s mind. Lacking chronological order, the events in a stream of consciousness narrative are presented from the character?s point of view, mixed in with the character?s ongoing feelings and memories.

The term "stream-of-consciousness" which was coined by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890) is used to indicate a literary approach to the presentation of psychological aspects of characters in fiction. It presents unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or make the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues The realm of life with which stream-of-consciousness novel is concerned is mental and spiritual experience, such as sensations, memories, imaginations, conceptions, intuitions, feelings and the process of association.

Stream of consciousness writing is a variant of the third person point of view, in which the narrator relates only what is experienced by a character?s mind from moment to moment.

Features of Stream of Consciousness

1.Presents thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur.

2.It shows a mind at work.

3.It may contain parts that do not seen coherent because that are based on the free association of ideas and feelings of an individual's mind.

4.It is in 3rd person

Robert Lee Frost:

1.Features of Frosts Poetry:

1. Frost's poetry mainly reflects life in rural New England

2. his poems often shift dramatically from humorous tones to tragic ones

3. Much of his poetry is concerned with how people interact with their environment

4. Frost disliked free verse; He often wrote in the standard meter of blank verse

2.The Road Not Taken

Meaning of this poem:The literal meaning of this poem by Robert Frost is pretty obvious. A traveler comes to a fork in the road and needs to decide which way to go to continue his journey. After much mental debate, the traveler picks the road "less traveled by.“

The figurative meaning is not too hidden either. The poem describes the tough choices people stand for when traveling the road of life. The words "sorry" and "sigh" make the tone of poem somewhat gloomy. The traveler regrets leaves the possibilities of the road not chosen behind. He realizes he probably won't pass this way again.

②This poem consists of four cinquains (5-line pattern) with a rhythm pattern of basic iambic tetrameter, rhyming ABAAB.

3.Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

①Momentary encounter with nature:

a.the traveler appears worried that he is observing th other person’s woods without permission.

b. the location is remote (l. 2). The weather is very cold. The evening is the darkest. Maybe, a year symbolizes a person’s life. Therefore, the darkest may refer to the depression, and/or downcast.

c. sounds are very important. These sounds are soft and sweet, compared with chaos in the city.

d. the speaker would even want to enter the woods, mysterious yet charming. However, he has obligations and responsibilities to keep going on.

②Meaning of The Poem:

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" presents one person’s momentary encounter with nature.

Why does this scene appeal to the narrator?

Because, he says, the woods are “lovely, dark, and deep.”Perhaps Frost sees the woods as a symbol of the vanishing wilderness consumed by railroads, highways, cities, shopping centers.

The narrator might also regard the woods as the nameless, ordinary people who have great beauty within them but are ignored by others.

③The poem consists of four stanzas, each with four lines. Each line in the poem has eight syllables .In each line, the first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed, the third is unstressed, the fourth is stressed, and so on. Each verse (save the last) follows an A-A-B-A rhyming scheme, with the following verse’s A is rhyming with that verse’s B, which is a chain rhyme.