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 symbol 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.
Unit5 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.
Unit 6 Henry David Thoreau
1.Where indeed did Thoreau live, both at a physical level and at a spiritual level?
He lived in a cabin on Walden Pond, which belonged to Emerson’s property.
2.Had Thoreau ever bought a farm? Why did he enjoy the act of buying? No, he hadn’t.
He avoided purchasing a farm because it would inevitably tie him down financially and complicate his life.
Thoreau didn’t see the acquisition of wealth as the goal for human existence, he saw the goal of life to be an exploration of the mind and of the magnificent world around us.
He regarded the places as an existence free of obligations and full of leisure.
3.Is it significant that Thoreau mentioned the Fourth of July as the day on which he began to stay in the woods? Why? Yes, it is.
Because The Fourth of July is known as Independence Day,the birthday ot the United States.
Here Thoreau uses the day to express his beginning of regeneration at Walden.
It also means a symbol of his conquest of being.
4.How could you answer the question Thoreau asked at the end of this selection?
Unit 7 19th Century American Poets
陶洁版美国文学选读_第三版_课后习题答案解析
