Part Ⅲ: Interpretation (20 points in all, 5 points for each)
Read the following selections and then answer the questions briefly.
Passage 1
Because I could not stop for Death——
He kindly stopped for me——
The Carriage held but just Ourselves——
And Immortality.
....
Questions:
1. Who is the Author of this poem?
2. What do “He” and “Carriage” refer to?
Passage 2
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean bilious looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens-election-members of congress-liberty-Bunker’s hill-heroes of seventy-six-and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.
Questions:
1. Who is the author and where is this passage taken from?
2. What do you know about the protagonist?
Passage 3
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Waston where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all round, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame.
Questions:
1. Please identify the author and the novel.
2. Please give a brief comment on this part.
Passage 4
...
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
....
Questions:
1. Who wrote this poem? What’s the title of it?
2. What can we know from the verse?
Part Ⅳ: Give brief answers to the following questions. (20 points in all,10 points for each)
1. What is “Leaves of Grass” mainly concerned about?
2. What is the most famous theme in Henry James’ fiction? And what is his favorite approach in characterization, which makes him different from Mark Twain as a realist?
