美国文学选读 第三版 课后习题答案 陶洁(部分)

Unit 1 Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography
1.Why did Franklin write his Autobiography?
Franklin says that because his son may wish to know about his life, he is taking his one week vacation in the English countryside to record his past. He also says that he has enjoyed his life and would like to repeat it.
参考：
The Autobiography is a book which contains the wisdom and success in life struggle, and unites the true meaning of goodness and morality. It is regarded as a book that changes many people's fates in terms of American Dream. As we all know, Benjamin Franklin is labeled as a self-made man and the first great man of letters. The Autoniography also makes several "firsts": The first popular self-help book ever published; The first major secular American Autobiography; The first real account of the American Dream action. He made so many achievements, but the reason we should also be aware of.
As far as I am concerned, the celebrities write autobiography to make people understand themselves and inspire future generations. Besides, he may want to be immortal in the history. However, in The Autobiography, Franklin wants to lecture his son as well as the Americans who holds a dream to fight against difficulties in the way to success.
Specifically, it can be divided into several parts. In 1771, Franklin was staying at Chilbolton, in the house of Bishop Jonanthan Shipley near Twyford in Hampshire. Shipley was a pro-American bishop among the British Bishops. He and his large family loved Franklin and regarded him as a modern day Socrates. They found Franklin's anecdotes of his childhood remarkable and insisted that he should tell the world the story of his life. With their encouragement, Franklin wrote the first part of his Autobiography. In Part One, Franklin addressed his son William, who was royal Governor of New Jersey, as the audience. The outbreak of the Revolution in 1776 made any plan for the memoirs impossible. In 1784 when he did have some time to resume the narrative, Franklin had left the manuscript of the first part in the United States and could not remember where he had stopped last time. More importantly, Franklin had been estranged from his son who had taken the side of British government. The Autobiography now took a more public tone. Franklin was more aware of his public image: some of his advisers and friends urged him to tell how he rose to world renown.
What's more, it establishes in literary form the first example of the fulfilment of the American Dream. Franklin demonstrates the possibilities of life in the New World through his own rise from the lower middle class as a youth to one of the most admired men in the world as an adult. It presents Americans today with a great hero from the past who helped establish the tradition of the American Dream. He established The Autobiography as a work that is meant to not only tell about a person's own life but also to educate the reader in ways to better live life.

2.What made Franklin decide to leave the brother to whom he had been apprenticed?
His brother was passionate, and had often beaten him. The aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to him through his whole life .After a brush with the law, Franklin left his brother.

3.How did he arrive in Philadephia?
First he set out in a boat for Amboy, the boat dropped him off about 50 miles from Burlington, the next day he reached Burlington on foot, in Burlington he found a boat which was going towards Philadelphia, he arrived there about eight or nine o’clock, on the Sunday morning and landed at the Market Street wharf.

4.What features do you find in the style of the above selection?
It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision(言简意赅). The narrative is lucid(易懂的), the structure is simple, the imagery is homely(朴素的).

Unit 2 Edgar Allen Poe The Cast of Amontillado
1.Who is the narrator? What wrong does he want to redress?
Montresor.
Fortunato, one of wine experts insulted him, so he wanted to murder him.

2.What is the pretext he uses to lure Fortunato to his wine cellar?
He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a cask of Amontillado a rare and valuable sherry wine.
Fortunato is anxious to determine whether or not it is truly Amontillado, so he goes to the vault with Montresor.

3.What happens to Fortunato in the end?
He was walled up alive behind bricks in a wine cellar.

4.Describe briefly how Poe characterizes Montresor and Fortunato as contrasts?
Poe uses color imagery to characterize them. Montresor face is covered in a black silk mask, In contrast, Fortunato dresses the motley-colored costume of the court fool, who gets literally and tragically fooled by Montresor's masked motives. The color schemes here represent the irony of Fortunato's death sentence.