多讀些書，讓我們用實力來碾壓所有考試和比賽

USAP(美國中學五項全能)中國賽區剛剛結束，深圳的孩子們戰果頗豐（全部都進入決賽，自豪臉）。

但是，文學項目還是相對比較獎牌比較珍稀。

雖然大家比賽前覺得備考資料比較少（內容只有藝術的三分之一），咋一看感覺需要吃透的材料似乎不多，覺得簡單，但現實是獲獎的同學寥寥。

為什么呢？Domino覺得文學其實是美國／英國初高中課堂上說的English， 類似于我們的語文課，是必修的課。

雖然備考資料沒有很多，但知識儲備要求很多。

不好好下功夫，薄薄的幾頁材料，也很難啃下。

SAT 閱讀也是一樣。

文學和歷史這兩類需要積淀的文章是考生最大的盲區。

其中考到：作者的tone, 文本的evidence，文學手法的使用和效果，等等。

這些都不是一篇兩篇閱讀練習就可以拿下的。

當然還有SAT寫作。

五十分鐘需要閱讀歷史文獻，并且完成寫作任務。

文章長度在650－750字之間，涉及到一個特殊時期的歷史現象。

作者用上了文本evidence, 文學手法（具有風格的寫作）以及說理來希望讀者接受一個建議或者觀點。

對閱讀能力要求很高的還有AP美國史和AP文學（具體考試分析見＋鏈接 “關于AP美國歷史，你需要知道的所有事情”），都是由閱讀材料堆砌而成的。

如果沒有閱讀量上的積累，首先文本就無法理解，更別提做題和寫分析類文章的準確了（沒錯analytical essay是這兩個考試的重頭戲）。

所以，這個學期我們一起讀小說吧～

Domino 選擇了九部英美文學經典作品，每周和大家一起閱讀賞析一部作品。

這些作品涉及到的文學流派有現實主義，浪漫主義，唯美主義，和黑色幽默等，歷史背景跨度從法國革命, 爵士時代到民權運動，虛構的故事中蘊涵著深刻的歷史思考，這些小說包括：

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1885

The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde, 1890

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1899

Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915

The Great Gatsby, F.

Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952

Lord of Files, William Golding, 1954

Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961

我們的賞析分為四個層次：

1.選章閱讀點評；

2.小說人物塑造；

3.歷史背景和影響；

4.文學手法和效果。

接下來以 A Tale of Two Cities 作為范例。

全書分為三冊。

主要情節是

故事發生時，政治犯Doctor Manette在Bastille牢獄度過了十八年的囚徒生活，年事已高的他終于得以釋放，并與女兒在England重聚。

這那里，有兩位男士都傾心于女兒 Lucie Manette，一位是Charles Darnay，被流放的法國貴族，另一位是Sydney Carton，聲名狼藉但出色的英國律師。

兩位男士的命運也因此相互纏繞。

在倫敦靜謐的道路上， 他們被迫來到了充滿血腥和復仇氣息的巴黎。

此時的巴黎正處于專制鎮壓革命的恐怖統治巔峰，很快兩人便被斷頭臺的致命陰影籠罩著。

“After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England.

There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette.

From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.”

https://www.

goodreads.

com/book/show/1953.

A_Tale_of_Two_Cities

小說因為成書于一兩百年前，再加上作者故意為之的選詞，很多表達的意思和現代英語是不一樣的，會造成閱讀的困難，但我們不需要細嚼每一個詞的含義，我們可以更專注于Dickens是如何塑造主要人物，以及人物的命運是如何與革命和戰爭相聯系。

作者用到了大量的文學手法，如明喻，暗喻和典故等。

我們在課上會分析到這些手法的使用是如何使人物的形象清晰起來，并躍于紙上的。

首先，我們需要在課上先了解一些文學手法和概念。

這樣我們才能更好的文學作品它們的出現劼，以及給讀者帶來了什么文字上的沖擊。

正如，“離不開你，我失去了活下去的力量”和“離開了你，我就像擱淺在沙灘的鯊魚”，哪個會更觸動內心的柔軟呢？

接著，我們要賞析選篇。

課上會選擇前兩章來分析，小說的大環境是如何營造出來的，主角是如何走進讀者的視野并在文字中豐滿起來的。

要理解好文本的含義，詞表可不能少。

接下來請大家先閱讀第一章的內容吧～

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France.

In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this.

Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster.

Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs.

Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.

Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.

It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.

It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution.

But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting.

Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security;

the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him through the head and rode away;

the mall was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:”

after which the mall was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one

highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball;

thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St.

Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way.

In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday;

now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand.

Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.