Lesson 9

1. Lesson9 • Mark Twain --- Mirror of America

3. Objectives of Teaching: • To comprehend the whole text • To lean and master the vocabulary and expressions • To learn to paraphrase the difficult sentences • To understand the structure of the text • To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the passage.

4. Important and difficult points • 1.

5. II. Questions for Text Understanding • 1. What is a biography? • 2. If you were asked to write a biography of sb., how are you going to arrange all the material available. What is the general way of writing a biography? • 3. What kind of language do you expect to encounter and why? • 4. What is the author's appraisal of Mark Twain?

6. II. Questions for Text Understanding • 5. Who was Mark Twain ? What had he been before he became an author? And where did his pen name come from? • 6. Say something about the historical background of Mark Twain's time. • 7. How many stages do you think the author divide Mark Twain's life into?

7. III. Background Information: • National Geographic Magazine, with a circulation of more than 10 million copies annually, is the third biggest only next to TV Guide and Reader's Digest (more than 16 million ). It is a monthly journal run by the National Geographic Society based in Washington DC, a non-profit scientific and educational organization.

8. III. Background Information: • A biography is, by definition, an account of someone's life that has been written by someone else. Or a written history of someone's life. • Generally, a biography is about sb. who enjoys certain reputation, who has acquired certain fame by his / her success in certain area. The protagonist can be a positive or negative character.

9. III. Background Information: • A brief outline of Tom • Tom lives with his younger brother Sid and Aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, a remote town on the banks of the Mississippi river. While his brother Sid is a “model” boy, Tom is quite the opposite of his brother.

10. III. Background Information: • At school he disobeys his teacher and always busies himself with outside matters at the lessons. Tom’s bosom friend is Huck Finn, a boy deserted by his drunkard of a father and looked upon as an outcast in the town.

11. II. Background Information: • But Tom has read many books and wants to make his life just as bright as it is depicted in the stories. He devises games in which the boys play the role of brave outlaws and warlike Red Indians who are the terror of the rich and the oppressors.

12. II. Background Information: • One night the boys involuntarily witness the murder of Dr. Robinson. An innocent man is charged with the crime. But on the day of the trial Tom fearlessly exposes the real criminal the Indian Joe who escapes through an open window of the courtroom.

13. II. Background Information: • Another night, the boys went out to dig for hidden treasures near a deserted house three miles from town. There they almost fall into the hands of the murderer who accidentally finds a box filled with gold coins.

14. II. Background Information: • Shortly after the incident Tom goes to a picnic with a party of schoolmates. Exploring a cave, he gets lost with Becky Thatcher, the daughter of the Judge. Tom behaves like a brave boy, calms Becky’s fears and finds the way out of the cave.

15. II. Background Information: • In a few days’ time Tom and Huck return to the cave. They find the dead body of the murderer, who could not have found the way out of the cave and also the hidden treasures.

16. II. Background Information: • A brief outline of Huck • Tom and Huck find the money. They each get six thousand dollars, which they deposit with Judge Thatcher. The Widow Douglas takes Huck for her son and tries to “civilize” him.

17. II. Background Information: • In the meantime, Huck’s father tries to get the money and succeeds in kidnapping the boy and imprisons him in a lonely cabin. To free himself from both the boring widow and the brutal father, Huck runs away to a deserted island in the middle of the Mississippi river.

18. II. Background Information: • In doing so, he makes it appear that he has been murdered by some robbers. On the island he meets Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave, and the two become close friends.

19. II. Background Information: • They started down the river, come across all sorts of people and have lots of fun and adventures. Toward the end of the novel Jim is caught and imprisoned at a farm, and Huck and Tom make a spectacular but unsuccessful attempt to rescue him.

20. II. Background Information: • At last it turns out that Huck’s father has died and Miss Watson has also died, but not before setting Jim free in her will.

21. III. Detailed study of the text: • 1. Mirror of America: • A mirror reflects or reveals the truth of something or somebody.

22. III. Detailed study of the text: • 2. Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the father... • Father: metaphor. • Endless: hyperbole. • The whole sentence: parallelism.

23. III. Detailed study of the text: • Mark Twain is famous to most Americans as the creator of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Huck's sailing / travel on the river was so light-hearted, carefree and peaceful that it made his boyhood seem to be infinite, while Tom's independent mind and his exciting and dangerous activities made the summer seem everlasting.

24. III. Detailed study of the text: • 3. idyllic: [i / ai] a simple happy period of life, often in the country • an idyllic setting, holiday, marriage

25. Detailed study of the text: • 4. cruise: A cruise is a holiday during which you travel on a ship and visit lots of places. When it is used as a verb, it means to move at a constant speed that is comfortable and unhurried.

26. Detailed study of the text: • He was on a world cruise. • They spent the summer cruising in the Greek islands. • The taxi cruised off down the Chang'an Avenue. • cruise missile • cruiser: a large fast warship.

27. Detailed study of the text: • 5. every bit as…as: infml, just as…as, quite as…as • He is every bit as clever as you are. • I'm every bit as sorry about it as you.

28. Detailed study of the text: • 6. cynical: A cynical person believes that all men are selfish. He sees little or no good in anything and shows this by making unkind and unfair remarks about people and things.

29. Detailed study of the text: • cynic: n. a person who believes that people do not do things for good, sincere or noble reasons, but only for their own advantage • a cynical remark, attitude, smile • They've grown rather cynical about democracy, ie no longer believe that it is an honest system.

30. Detailed study of the text: • 7. deal, dealt: to give , to give out, to strike, to distribute • Who deals the cards next? • to deal sb. a blow

31. Detailed study of the text: • 8. obsess: to worry continuously and unnecessarily. • If sth. obsesses you or if you are obsessed with it or by it, you keep thinking about it over a long period of time, and find it difficult to think about anything else. • She is obsessed by the desire to become a great actress.

32. Detailed study of the text: • 9. frailty: a weakness of character or behaviour. • One of the frailties of human nature is laziness. • That chair looks too frail to take a man's weight. • There is only a frail chance that he will pass the examination.

33. Detailed study of the text: • 10. tramp: a person who has no home or permanent job and very little money. A woman who is thought to have sex with a lot of men is cursed to be a tramp.. • There's a tramp at the door begging for food.

34. Detailed study of the text: • 11. pilot: a person who with special knowledge of a particular stretch of water, esp. the entrance of a harbour, and who is trained and specially employed to go on board and guide ships that use it.

35. Detailed study of the text: • 14. prospector: a person who examines the land in order to find gold, oil, etc. • 15. starry: full of stars in the sky, indicating sparkling, glowing, and flashing.

36. Detailed study of the text: • starry-eyed: full of unreasonable or silly hopes. • If you are starry-eyed, you are so full of dreams or hopes or idealistic thoughts that you do not see how things really are. • We were all starry-eyed about visiting London.

37. Detailed study of the text: • 16. acid-tongued: If sb. is acid-tongued, he makes unkind or critical remarks. • 17. range: to travel without any definite plan or destination

38. Detailed study of the text: • 18. digest: • If you digest information, you think about it, understand it, and remember it. • The report contains too much to digest at one reading. • He reads rapidly but does not digest very much.

39. Detailed study of the text: • adopt: to take and use as one's own • The US government decided to adopt a hard line towards terrorism. • Having no children of their own they decided to adopt an orphan / dog. • adopt a name, a custom, an idea, a style of dress

40. Detailed study of the text: • cf: • adept: ~ (in sth); ~ (at/in doing sth) • He's an adept in carpentry. • adapt: make sth suitable for a new use, situation, etc. • This novel has been adapted for TV from the Russian original. • Our eyes slowly adapted to the dark.

41. Detailed study of the text: • signal: a sign, gesture, sound, etc. that conveys a message • a signal made with a red flag • She flashed the torch as a signal. • They signaled their discontent by refusing to vote. • This is an event signaling a change in public opinion.

42. Detailed study of the text: • 20. navigable: deep and wide enough to allow ships to travel • 21. popularity: the quality of being well liked, favoured, or admired • 22. attest: to show to be true, to give proof of, to declare solemnly • Historic documents and ancient tombstones all attest to the fact that this is a historic battlefield.

43. Detailed study of the text: • 23. artery: blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body • vein: any of the tubes carrying blood from all parts of the body to the heart

44. Detailed study of the text: • 24. keel: a long bar along the bottom of a boat or ship from which the whole frame of the boat or ship is built up. • 25. raft: floating platform made from large pieces of wood, oil-drums, etc, that are tied together. Also rubber raft.

45. Detailed study of the text: • 26. commerce: the buying and selling of goods, trade. Here commodities. • 27. lumber: tree trunks, logs or planks, timber

46. Detailed study of the text: • 28. delta country: Delta is the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet, which is shaped like a triangle. Therefore anything in the shape of a delta, esp. a deposit of sand and soil formed at the mouth of some rivers is called a delta.

47. Detailed study of the text: • 29. molasses: a thick dark to light brown syrup that is separated from raw sugar • cf: syrup: a thick sticky solution of sugar and water, often flavoured

48. Detailed study of the text: • 30. westward expansion: • The massacre of the native Indians • The 1803 Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon's France. • The 1845 Texas Annexation • Also the California Gold Rush in 1848

49. Detailed study of the text: • 31. basin: • the Yellow River Basin • The basin made up 3/4 of the populated area of the US of that time.

50. Detailed study of the text: • 32. drain: to cause to become gradually dry or empty • Boil the vegetable for 2 minutes and then drain the water. • brain drain • 33. cub: the young of various types of meat-eating wild animals, such as lion, bear