A clean well-lighted place 1. The Cask of Amontilado简介：The story is narrated by Montresor, the protagonist, who carries a grudge against Fortunato for an offense that is never explained. Montresor leads a drunken Fortunato through a series of chambers beneath his palazzo with the promise of a taste of Amontillado, a wine that Montresor has just purchased. When the two men reach the last underground chamber, Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall, builds a new wall to seal him in, and leaves him to die.
赏析：As this is a horror story, the setting is also adequate. Everything begins in the evening during the carnival season. But the location quickly changes from the places where the festival took place into the damp, dark and portentous catacombs of the Montresors. In order to start the
interpretation, we ought to learn more about the two main characters, Fortunato and Montresor. The first one seems to be a very careless man, without any serious problems. He differs so much from Montresor, who is actually the narrator of story as well as the main character. He pledged
revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. He is quite sneaky,
cunning and what is of great importance here, inexorable. There is also one more
character in the text, Luchesi (or Luchresi in some
versions) but he is not that important. He does not
actually appear, but is merely mentioned by Montr 2.The Scarlet Letter
简介：Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850, the year in which the Clay Compromise postponed the American Civil War, The Scarlet Letter is a romance set in the years from 1642 to 1649, when Puritans were fighting the English civil war over the ultimate meaning of England, and Puritans in the Boston of Hawthorne's story were attempting to label Hester Prynne. A woman taken in adultery, she must wear the letter A on her chest for all to see, yet she
surrounds it with beautiful stitching, so that it
advertises not only her shame, but also her skill as a seamstress. She refuses to name her lover, the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale; keeps her word not to reveal the identity of her husband, now calling himself Roger Chillingworth; and raises her daughter, Pearl, on her own, living at the edge
of town, near the wild forest and the open sea. 赏析：As its title suggests, the book is about labeling, about the Puritan and later the American desire to eliminate ambiguity, to get the meanings right. The tale shows that even so simple a label as the first letter of the alphabet is full of burgeoning meanings dependent upon changing contexts. After Hester's competence and usefulness to the community become evident, some think the letter stands for \When an A appears in the sky at Governor John Winthrop's death, they think it stands for \Since historical Puritans convicted of adultery were made to wear the letters AD on their sleeves, critics have noted that these are Dimmesdale's initials and concluded that the A also represents Arthur. Anne Hutchinson of the
Antinomian Controversy is explicitly mentioned in the text, so the letter also represents Anne and
Antinomian. Readers may well conclude that the A can mean almost anything, even America, where we still struggle to reinscribe the labels that others put on us. 3翻译：
我的想象却跑得太远了些，我甚至想到有几处田园会拒绝我，不肯出售给我，——被拒绝正合我的心愿呢，——我从来不肯让实际的占有这类事情的伤过我的手指头。几乎已实际地占有田园那一次，是我购置霍乐威尔那个地方的时候，都已经开始选好种子，找出了木料来，打算造一架手推车，来推动这事，或载之而他往了；可是在原来的主人正要给我一纸契约之前，他的妻子——每一个男人都有一个妻子的——发生了变卦，她要保持她的田产了，他就提出赔我十元钱，解除约定。现在说句老实话，我在这个世界上只有一角钱，假设我真的有一角钱的话，或者又有田园，又有十元，或有了所有的这一切，那我这点数学知识可就无法计算清楚了。不管怎样，我退回了那十元钱，退还了那田园，因为这一次我已经做过头了，应该说，我是很慷慨的罗，我按照我买进的价格，按原价再卖了给他，更因为他并不见得富有，还送了他十元，但保留了我的一角钱和种子，以及备而未用的独轮车的木料。如此，我觉得我手面已很阔绰，而且这样做无损于我的贫困。至于那地方的风景，我却也保留住了，后来我每年都得到丰收，却不需要独轮车来载走。关于风景，——
八月里，在轻柔的斜凤细雨暂停的时候，这小小的湖做我的邻居，最为珍贵，那时水和空气都完全平静了，天空中却密布着乌云，下午才过了一半却已具备了一切黄昏的肃穆，而画眉在四周唱歌，隔岸相闻。这样的湖，再没有比这时候更平静的了；湖上的明净的空气自然很稀薄，而且给乌云映得很黯淡了，湖水却充满了光明和倒影，成为一个下界的天空，更加值得珍视。从最近被伐木的附近一个峰顶上向南看，穿过小山间的巨大凹处，看得见隔湖的一幅愉快的图景，那凹处正好形成湖岸，那儿两座小山坡相倾斜而下，使人感觉到似有一条溪涧从山林谷中流下，但是，却没有溪涧。我是这样地从近处的绿色山峰之间和之上，远望一些蔚蓝的地平线上的远山或更高的山峰的。真的，踮起了足尖来，我可以望见西北角上更远、更蓝的山脉，这种蓝颜色是天空的染料制造厂中最真实的出品，我还可以望见村镇的一角。但是要换一个方向看的话，虽然我站得如此高，却给郁茂的树木围住，什么也看不透，看不到了。在邻近，有一些流水真好，水有浮力，地就浮在上面了。便是最小的井也有这一点值得推荐，当你窥望井底的时候，你发现大地并不是连绵的大陆；而是隔绝的孤岛。这是很重要的，正如井水之能冷藏牛油。当我的目光从这一个山顶越过湖向萨德伯里草原望过去的时候，在发大水的季节里，我觉得草原升高了，大约是蒸
腾的山谷中显示出海市蜃楼的效果，它好像沉在水盆底下的一个天然铸成的铜市，湖之外的大地都好像薄薄的表皮，成了孤岛，给小小一片横亘的水波浮载着，我才被提醒，我居住的地方只不过是干燥的土地。 4.诗歌：
1.I Shot an Arrow：This poem is written in a traditional iambic form with the feet “aabb aacc ddee”. In the poem, Longfellow sings
the
friendship
implicitly and skillfully. The arrow and the song in this poem
stand
for
the
friendship. When he shot an arrow and breathed a song into the air, he did not expect to find them any more. But many years later, he came across with the arrow and found that his song was always in the heart of his friend. This
suggests that the friendship is everlasting. A psalm of life
2. Dreams：The theme of the poem is to tell people the importance of dreams. Without dreams, one will be like a broken-winged bird that can never fly. Without dreams, one’s life will be like a frozen barren field, full of sorrow and desolation. Also, dreams here also refer to the black people’s
longing
for
freedom, equality and civil right. Dreams are the essential spiritual pillar of the blacks to bear the oppression
and
exploitation. For a long time, the blacks bravely
faced the harsh reality by virtue of the dreams. This poem is to encourage the blacks to look forward to the future.
3.Sonnet—To Science:In this poem, Poe followed the rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet, that is, abab cdcd efef gg.The tension between science on the one hand and art and imagination on the other endows the poem with a unique power and significance. The poem is a good indication that Poe was in essence a Renaissance man. He derived in part from Plato the notion that the universe was endowed with myth, and tried to restore it to the primordial unity which the cosmos once possessed. Poe does not see science and scientific development as a good thing , rather he feels that science \all things with thy peering eyes.\grows stronger and appears in virtually all of Poe's later tales and stories.
4.Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evenning:This poem is written by American poet Robert Frost whose works are mostly concerned with nature. In this poem, he
discribes a little incident happening in a snowy evenning. As a traveller,the poet is facsinated by the beautiful scene in the woods. He stops to enjoy it, but his mind urges him to go on, because there is a long way ahead of him, an unfinished duty watting for him. This poem is plain in words, but profounded in meaning. Since it is full of symbolic constructs, it is thought-provoking, and the readers can get great fun in developing the subtext.
A clean well-lighted place 1. The Cask of Amontilado简介：The story is narrated by Montresor, the protagonist, who carries a grudge against Fortunato for
an offense that is never explained. Montresor leads a drunken Fortunato through a series of chambers beneath his palazzo with the promise of a taste of Amontillado, a wine that Montresor has just purchased. When the two men reach the last underground chamber, Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall, builds a new wall to seal him in, and leaves him to die.
赏析：As this is a horror story, the setting is also adequate. Everything begins in the evening during the carnival season. But the location quickly changes from the places where the festival took place into the damp, dark and portentous catacombs of the Montresors. In order to start the
interpretation, we ought to learn more about the two main characters, Fortunato and Montresor. The first one seems to be a very careless man, without any serious problems. He differs so much from Montresor, who is actually the narrator of story as well as the main character. He pledged
revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. He is quite sneaky, cunning and what is of great importance here, inexorable. There is also one more
character in the text, Luchesi (or Luchresi in some
versions) but he is not that important. He does not
actually appear, but is merely mentioned by Montr 2.The Scarlet Letter
简介：Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850, the year in which the Clay Compromise postponed the American Civil War, The Scarlet Letter is a romance set in the years from 1642 to 1649, when Puritans were fighting the English civil war over the ultimate meaning of England, and Puritans in the Boston of Hawthorne's story were attempting to label Hester Prynne. A woman taken in adultery, she must wear the letter A on her chest for all to see, yet she
surrounds it with beautiful stitching, so that it
advertises not only her shame, but also her skill as a seamstress. She refuses to name her lover, the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale; keeps her word not to reveal the identity of her husband, now calling himself Roger Chillingworth; and raises her daughter, Pearl, on her own, living at the edge of town, near the wild forest and the open sea. 赏析：As its title suggests, the book is about labeling, about the Puritan and later the American desire to eliminate ambiguity, to get the meanings right. The tale shows that even so simple a label as the first letter of the alphabet is full of burgeoning meanings dependent upon changing contexts. After Hester's competence and usefulness to the community become evident, some think the letter stands for \When an A appears in the sky at Governor John Winthrop's death, they think it stands for \Since historical Puritans convicted of adultery were made to wear the letters AD on their sleeves, critics have noted that these are Dimmesdale's initials and concluded that the A also represents Arthur. Anne Hutchinson of the
Antinomian Controversy is explicitly mentioned in the text, so the letter also represents Anne and
Antinomian. Readers may well conclude that the A can mean almost anything, even America, where we still struggle to reinscribe the labels that others put on us. 3翻译：
我的想象却跑得太远了些，我甚至想到有几处田园会拒绝我，不肯出售给我，——被拒绝正合我的心愿呢，——我从来不肯让实际的占有这类事情的伤过我的手指头。几乎已实际地占
有田园那一次，是我购置霍乐威尔那个地方的时候，都已经开始选好种子，找出了木料来，打算造一架手推车，来推动这事，或载之而他往了；可是在原来的主人正要给我一纸契约之前，他的妻子——每一个男人都有一个妻子的——发生了变卦，她要保持她的田产了，他就提出赔我十元钱，解除约定。现在说句老实话，我在这个世界上只有一角钱，假设我真的有一角钱的话，或者又有田园，又有十元，或有了所有的这一切，那我这点数学知识可就无法计算清楚了。不管怎样，我退回了那十元钱，退还了那田园，因为这一次我已经做过头了，应该说，我是很慷慨的罗，我按照我买进的价格，按原价再卖了给他，更因为他并不见得富有，还送了他十元，但保留了我的一角钱和种子，以及备而未用的独轮车的木料。如此，我觉得我手面已很阔绰，而且这样做无损于我的贫困。至于那地方的风景，我却也保留住了，后来我每年都得到丰收，却不需要独轮车来载走。关于风景，——
八月里，在轻柔的斜凤细雨暂停的时候，这小小的湖做我的邻居，最为珍贵，那时水和空气都完全平静了，天空中却密布着乌云，下午才过了一半却已具备了一切黄昏的肃穆，而画眉在四周唱歌，隔岸相闻。这样的湖，再没有比这时候更平静的了；湖上的明净的空气自然很稀薄，而且给乌云映得很黯淡了，湖水却充满了光明和倒影，成为一个下界的天空，更加值得珍视。从最近被伐木的附近一个峰顶上向南看，穿过小山间的巨大凹处，看得见隔湖的一幅愉快的图景，那凹处正好形成湖岸，那儿两座小山坡相倾斜而下，使人感觉到似有一条溪涧从山林谷中流下，但是，却没有溪涧。我是这样地从近处的绿色山峰之间和之上，远望一些蔚蓝的地平线上的远山或更高的山峰的。真的，踮起了足尖来，我可以望见西北角上更远、更蓝的山脉，这种蓝颜色是天空的染料制造厂中最真实的出品，我还可以望见村镇的一角。但是要换一个方向看的话，虽然我站得如此高，却给郁茂的树木围住，什么也看不透，看不到了。在邻近，有一些流水真好，水有浮力，地就浮在上面了。便是最小的井也有这一点值得推荐，当你窥望井底的时候，你发现大地并不是连绵的大陆；而是隔绝的孤岛。这是很重要的，正如井水之能冷藏牛油。当我的目光从这一个山顶越过湖向萨德伯里草原望过去的时候，在发大水的季节里，我觉得草原升高了，大约是蒸腾的山谷中显示出海市蜃楼的效果，它好像沉在水盆底下的一个天然铸成的铜市，湖之外的大地都好像薄薄的表皮，成了孤岛，给小小一片横亘的水波浮载着，我才被提醒，我居住的地方
只不过是干燥的土地。 4.诗歌：
1.I Shot an Arrow：This poem is written in a traditional iambic form with the feet “aabb aacc ddee”. In the poem, Longfellow sings
the
friendship
implicitly and skillfully. The arrow and the song in this poem
stand
for
the
friendship. When he shot an arrow and breathed a song into the air, he did not expect to find them any more. But many years later, he came across with the arrow and found that his song was always in the heart of his friend. This suggests
that
the
friendship is everlasting. A psalm of life
美国文学
