Part Ⅳ: Interpretation(16%)
Read the following selections and then answer the questions.
Passage 1
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller , long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
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,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
1. What does the poet mean symbolically by “road”?
2. Why did the speaker choose the road less travelled by?
Passage 2
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
…
I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited-they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.
I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer: the honor would be entirely Gatsby’s, it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night. He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it-signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic hand.
Dressed up in white flannels, I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know-though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.
As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table-the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.
3. Which novel is this passage taken from? Who is the writer?
4.How do you interpret the atmosphere of contradiction which is evoked in this chapter?
Part V: Give brief answers to the following questions. (14%)
1. Please give a brief analysis of Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”.
2. What is American naturalism? Please make a brief analysis.
