GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
Everyone had always said
that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his
father. It has been so often that John, without
ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself.
Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday
did he really begin to think about it, and by then it
was already too late.
His earliest
memories—which were in a way, his only memories—were of the hurry
and
brightness of Sunday mornings. They all rose together on that
day; his father, who did not have to
go to work, and led them in prayer before breakfast; his
mother, who dressed up on that day, and
looked almost young, with her hair straightened, and on her
head the close-fitting white cap that
was the uniform of holy women; his younger brother, Roy, who
was silent that day because his
father was home. Sarah, who wore a red ribbon in her hair that
day, and was fondled by her father.
And the baby, Ruth, who was dressed in pink and white, and
rode in her mother’s arms to church.
接下来——remember是一个关键词。John
did not remember very clearly the first time she had gone,
to have Roy……he remembered only enough
to be afraid every time her belly began to swell,
knowing that each time the swelling began it
would not end until she was taken from him, to
come back with an stranger.………………………………Every Sunday morning, then,
since John could remember。
When he was young,
John had paid no attention in Sunday school, and always forgot
the golden text, which earned him the wrath
of his father
这一切都是泛叙。所谓泛叙，也就是主人公和人称出场之后由隐含叙述者操控为之铺开的生活世界，也就是环境描写部分。有深描，有速写，有白描，有浓墨。
John’s birthday fell on a
Sunday in March, in 1935. He awoke on this birthday morning with
the feeling that there was menace in the air
around him—that something irrevocable had occurred
in him. He stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling
just above his head. Roy was still smothered in
the bedclothes, and his breath came and went with
a small, whistling sound. There was no other
sound anywhere; no one in the house was up. The
neighbors’ radios were all silent, and his mother
hadn’t yet risen to fix his father’s breakfast.
John wondered at his panic, then wondered about the time;and then
(while the yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself
into a woman’s
nakedness) he remembered that it was his fourteenth birthday
and that he had sinned.
His
first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘Will anyone remember?’ For it
had happened, once or twice, that his
birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said ‘Happy
Birthday,Johnny,’ or given him anything—not even his
mother.【remember暴露了隐含叙述者的词语游戏】
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(2013-10-07 09:59:12)