Ⅱ.Reading Comprehension (16 points, 4 for each)

   Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English.Write your answer in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

41. "One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
   And death shall be no more; death, thou shall die."
Questions:
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
B. What does the word "sleep" mean?
C. What idea do the two lines express?
Answers:
A. John Donne: "Death Be Not Proud."
B. Death.
C. Shortly after our death (compared to "sleep"), our soul will enter heaven and live happily forever.
42.  "Never did sun more beautifully steep
   In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
   Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
   The river glideth at his own sweet will:
   Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
   And all that mighty heart is lying still!"
(William Wordsworth's sonnet: "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" 1802)
Questions:
A. What does the word "glideth" in the fourth line mean?
B. What kind of figure of speech is used by Wordsworth to describe the "river"?
C. What idea does the fourth line express?
Answers:
A. To move smoothly and quietly, as if no effort was being made.
B. Personification. Here the river is personified so that it has its own will.
C. Wordsworth emphasizes that the river runs freely (in the early morning because there is no barges or steamers or other kind of man-made burdens imposed on it to hinder its running).
43. "With Blue - uncertain stumbling Buzz -
   Between the light - and me -
   And then the Windows failed - and then
   I could not see to see -"
Questions:
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
B. What do "Windows" symbolically stand for?
C. What idea does the quoted passage express?
Answers:
A. Emily Dickinson: (465)"I Heard a Fly Buzz, When I Died".
B. Eyes, for they are considered as the windows of human soul.
C. The last thing the dying person saw and heard was the fly and its buzz. When the eyes failed, the human soul was closed and the person died. (The speaker could not see any of the after life or God or angels she expected to see.)
44. "‘Is dying hard, Daddy?’
   ‘No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.’"
Questions:
A. Identify the work and the author.
B. What was Nick preoccupied with when he asked the question?
C. Why did the father add "It all depends" after he answered his son's question?
Answers:
A. Ernest Hemingway: Indian Camp.
B. Life and death.
C. When the father says that dying is pretty easy, he might be thinking about the self-murdered husband. But when he reflects on the wife's miracle survival of the violent pain in the whole process of birth, he adds the final sentence. Dying is both hard and easy, it all depends on individuals.

Ⅲ.Questions and Answers(24 points in all, 6 for each)

   Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English.Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

45. It is said that B. Shaw's play, Mrs. Warren's Profession, has a strong realistic theme, which fully reflects the dramatist's Fabianist idea. Try to summarize this theme briefly.
Answer:
A. The play reveals that guilt for prostitution lies more upon the social system than the immoral woman.
B. In the play, Shaw shows clearly that all human sufferings are consequences of the cruel economic exploitation, which is pursued shamelessly by the so-called respectable members of the society through the lowest and the dirtiest means.
46. Emily Bronte used a very complicated narrative technique in writing her novel Wuthering Heights. Try to tell Bronte's way of narration briefly.
Answer:
A. Emily Bronte starts the story from towards the end when Heathcliff is master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and little Cathy and Hareton are still in his clutch, and then goes back to the very beginning and moves back and forth as the occasion requires.
B. Most of the story is told by Nelly, Catherine's old nurse, to Mr. Lockwood,  a temporary tenant at Thrushcross Grange.
C. Part of it is told by Mr. Lockwood himself, and part through Catherine's diary and Isabella's letters to Nelly.
47. "In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel." The two sentences are taken from Theodore Dreiser's novel, Sister Carrie. What idea can you draw from the "rocking-chair"?
Answer:
A. The "rocking-chair" is a symbol standing for fate. It is like a cradle that makes one feel peaceful. It is also like a tide that ever goes on with life, the destiny of which is uncertain.
B. At the end of the novel, Carrie sits in the rocking-chair, which implies that her future is still uncertain and hard to foresee.
48. The literary school of naturalism was quite popular in the late 19th century. What are the major characteristics of naturalism?
Answer:
A. Strongly influenced by social Darwinism, naturalism emphasizes the determining power of the crushing forces of environment and heredity.
B. Being devoid of the freedom of choice and incapable of shaping their own destinies, men and women are helpless and insignificant in a cold and indifferent world.
C. The naturalistic writers reported truthfully and objictively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and overwhelming accumulation of factual detail.

Ⅳ.Topic Discussion(20 points in all, 10 for each)

Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
49. Discuss the possible theme in W.B. Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and how that theme is presented in the poem.
Answer:
A.  The poem might be read as a declaration of the poet's longing for rustic/natural life as opposed to city/civilized artificial life. This idea is expressed through contrasting images such as simple, peaceful country life suggested by "a small cabin" of "clay and wattle," "bean-rows,""a hive for the honeybee,""bee-loud glade," etc., as opposed to the artificial/civilized life suggested by "the roadway" and "the pavement gray."
B. If the sound of the lapping water by the shore is a call upon the poet, then the repetition of "I will arise and go now" reveals the poet's determination to escape into that fairyland where he could live in peace and enjoy the beautiful of nature.
C. Examinees may also have noticed that the images that suggest the beauty of natural life outnumber those that suggest undesirable city life, and this also shows the poet's preference.
50. "My faith is gone!" cried he (Goodman Brown), after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given."
Comment on this passage from Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown".
Answer:
A. Goodman Brown utters this cry when he finds his wife Faith, together with lots of prominent people of the village and the church, attending a witches' Sabbath in the woods.
B. His cry show his great surprise and didillusionment. Thereafter, he becomes distrustful and doubtful. He lives a dismal and gloomy life because he is never able to believe in goodness or piety again. Here the author makes a pun of the word "faith". Goodman Brown loses not only his faith in religion and life, but also his faith in his wife, for his wife's name is Faith.
C. From this story, we also can see that Hawthorne is a great allegorist and a master of symbolism. The story itself is an allegory and is full of symbols such as the forest, the night, the snake, and the pink ribbon.