B2U3 The Rite of Spring Text study

*,*,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,*,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,*,The Rite of Spring,Arthur Miller,Structure,of the Text,Part ,(paras.1-2) the,introduction,The,reason,why the writer starts a garden as a way of celebrating the coming of spring,Part ,(para,s,. 3-10) the,body,A lists of,reasons,for keeping a garden,Part ,(para,s,. 11-12),conclusion,Gardening keeps people,hopeful,for the future, even in the coldest days of December.,Part ,(paras.1-2) the,introduction,The,reason,why the writer starts a garden, as a way of celebrating the coming of spring,.,Patch,n.,a small piece of land, especially one used for growing vegetables or fruit,a small piece of material,e.g. There are patches on the knees of his pants.,a small area of something, especially one which is different from the area around it,e.g. a bald patch on the top of his head,a black dog with a white patch on its back,tell,vt. to distinguish one thing or person from another,e.g. to tell the difference between,to tell A from B,to tell A and B apart,i,nstinct,n.,a natural tendency for people and animals to behave in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities that they were born with rather than thought or training,e.g. His first instinct was to run away.,Children do not know by instinct the difference between right and wrong.,at work,:,being in ones job,e.g. The child goes to a nursery while his mother is at work.,having an effect on something,e.g. There were forces at work changing the character of the banking structure,justify,vt.,to show that somebody/something is right or reasonable,e.g. Her success had justified the faith her teachers had put in her.,to give an explanation or excuse for something or for doing something,e.g. Dont try to justify your mistakes.,resolve v. to make a firm decision to do something,e.g. to resolve to do sth. = be determined to do sth.,resolution n.,e.g. a new year resolution,r,ational,adj. reasonable, sensible ,able to think clearly and make decisions based on reason rather than emotions,w,aft,v.,to drift, to move, or make something move, gently through the air,e.g. Delicious smells wafted up from the kitchen.,melt v. to become or make something become soft / liquid as a result of heating,e.g. The snow melted in the following day.,When you think how easy and cheap, relatively, it is to buy a bunch of carrots or beets,why raise them,?,elliptical sentence. The complete sentence : Why,would you,raise them?”,carrots,beets,And root crops especially are hard to tell apart, when,store-bought, from our own.,It is really hard to recognize the difference of root crops we buy from stores and those we grow.,bought from a store,There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of,back-breaking,make-believe that has no reality.,back-breaking: very hard and tiring, physically-consuming,make-believe: imagining or pretending things to be different or more exciting than they really are,What causes this is probably human nature. Mankind tends to exercise by nature and unrealistically pretend that what they have done is better than it really is.,Now, if you could raise hot dogs outside your window, youd really have something you could justify without a seconds hesitation.,If you could grow hot dogs outside your window, you will be 100% sure that this is the right thing to do.,As it is,though, I cannot deny,that,when April comes,I find myself going out,to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land,resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again,.,As it is: As it turns out / The reality is that ,e.g. I thought he would get better. As it is, he is getting worse.,However, in reality, I have to admit that when April comes I leaned on the fence and look at this patch painfully and reasonably made up my mind not to garden any more.,adverbial clause of time,main clause,adverbial of purpose,present participle phrase / adverbial of manner,But inevitably a morning arrives when, just as I am awakening, a scent wafts through the window, something like earth-as-air, a scent that seems to come up from the very center of this planet.,But inevitably just as I am waking up in a morning, a pleasant smell floats up and pour in though the window. It smells like earth and it seems to rise from inside the earth.,And the sun,means business, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet.,To mean business: to be serious about something,e.g. I could tell from the look on her face that she meant business.,The sun suddenly gets serious and the yellow sunlight on the carpet looks different and deeper.,The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinkingthe worms are deliciously,worming their way,through the melting soil.,to worm ones way: to move like a worm,More similar verbs:,e.g. This success,rocketed,him to a top position.,She,ducked,her head to avoid being hit.,The beggar,wolfed,down the bread in less than a second.,The birds start to cry really loudly. We are thinking the same thing: the soil is becoming soft and the delicious worms are moving across the soil.,Part ,(para,s,. 3-10) the,body,A lists of,reasons,for keeping a garden,C,onflict,n.,a situation in which serious disagreement or argument are involved,e.g. to be in conflict with sb.,conflict between A and B,conflict over sth.,moist adj. slightly wet,e.g. Water the plants regularly to keep the soil moist.,soaked adj. very wet:,e.g. Youre soaked through! (= completely wet),weed-free,-free: without the thing mentioned,e.g. fat-free yogurt,a trouble-free life,toll-free calls,duty-free shops,rot v. to decay, to decompose, to be destroyed gradually by natural processes; to destroy something in this way,e.g. The continual rain will rot the rice.,Some of rubbish rot away over a long time.,grass,hay,hay mulch,compose v. to combine together to form a whole,composition n.,the different parts which something is made of,e.g. the composition of the board of directors,a piece of music or art, or a poem, or a writing,It is not only pleasure sending me back to stare at that plot of soil, it is really conflict.,=,It is not only pleasure but also conflict that send me back to stare at that plot of soil.,It worked perfectly, keeping the soil moist in dry times and weed-free.,It took a very good effect and kept the soil slightly wet when the climate was dry and kept weeds from growing.,But black plastic looks so industrial, so unromantic, that I have gradually,moved over to,hay mulch.,But black plastic is too unnatural and ugly. So I have gradually changed it to hay mulch.,changed to, shifted to,Besides, it looks lovely, and,comes to us free,.,Whats more, it is pretty to look at and we dont have to pay for it.,free of charge,Delicate,adj.,easily damaged or broken,e.g. Be careful with those delicate plates.,Bountiful,adj.,in large quantities, giving generously,e.g. He is bountiful of gift,In the early days of the nation, Americas bountiful resources seemed virtually inexhaustible.,load v. to put a large quantity of things or people onto or into something,e.g. Sacks of corns were being loaded onto the truck.,fertile adj. (of soil) that plants grow well in,e.g. Anything grows in this fertile ground.,fertilizer n. a substance added to soil to make plants grow better,Sparing adj. careful to use or give only a little of something,e.g. A sparing use of sugar will add a special flavor to the dish.,You should have been more sparing of / with your money.,broadcast v.,to send a program out by radio waves,e.g. This program is being broadcast in stereo.,to tell a lot of people about something,e.g. He broadcast the secret to the whole school.,to sow seeds into the ground,Keeping a garden makes you aware of how delicate, bountiful, and easily ruined the surface of this little planet is.,If you keep a garden, it will remind you,how generous the land of the earth is to human and how fragile and easily damaged it is.,In that,50-by-70-foot,patch there must be,50*70 feet,and,the same goes for,the other crops.,the same applies to / is true of,I suppose if you loaded the soil with chemical fertilizer these differences would be less noticeable, but I use it sparingly and only in rows right where seeds are planted rather than broadcast over the whole area.,I guess if I use a lot of chemical fertilizer, there wont be so much difference. But I am careful about it and use only a few of it and only in rows where there are seeds. I dont load it everywhere.,Im not sure why I do this,beyond,the saving in fertilizer and my unwillingness to aid the weeds.,Except the fact that I dont want to pay too much in fertilizer and that I dont want to help the weeds to grow, I dont know for sure why I do this.,besides, apart from, except,neurotic adj. not behaving in a reasonable, calm way, because you are worried about something,e.g. Shes neurotic about getting fat.,pointless adj. having no purpose; not worth doing,e.g. We must put an end to the pointless discussion.,It s pointless trying to keep your this secret when it is a common knowledge already.,paternal adj. connected with being a father; typical of a kind father,maternal adj. connected with being a mother,e.g. Her maternal instinct was aroused when she saw the crying baby.,My partner is on maternal leave.,strangle v.,to kill people by squeezing their throat tightly so that they cannot breathe,e.g. I was so mad at him that I would just strangle him.,to prevent something from growing or developing,e.g. The dictators first step was to strangle the free press.,I tried very hard to strangle my unhappiness.,Also, your paternal or maternal instincts,come into play,because helpless living things are depending on you, require training and encouragement and protection from enemies.,Also, your natural desire to take care of children start to take an effect because those plants need help and rely on you. You need to teach them, encourage them and prevent enemies from harming them.,start to take an effect, come at work,In some cases,as with,beans and cucumbers, your children ,as it were, begin to turn upon you in massive numbers, growing more and more each morning and threatening to follow you into the house to strangle you in their vines.,Beans and cucumbers can be said to be your children.,They grow so fast and produce so many vines that they almost crawl into the house.,These naughty children turn to you at the same time, making you hard to breathe.,as you might say, used to make an inexact description,just like,occupation n.,a job or profession,e.g. Coal mining has always been a dangerous occupation.,the way in which you spend your time, especially when you are not working,e.g.,Shopping is her main,occupation,.,chaos n. a state of complete confusion and lack of order,e.g. After the failure of electricity supplies the city was in chaos.,Science seeks the unity under the chaos of natural phenomena.,thin v. to become or make something become less thick or fewer,unthinned: adj. not having been thinned yet,mistress n.,a woman with whom a married man is having an affair,the female head of a house, especially one who employed servants,cultivate v. to grow plants or crops,hand-cultivating n. the planting with ones hands,squat v. to crouch, to put your body close to the ground by bending your legs,cast v. to throw away,e.g. Don t cast away these old papers ; they might come in useful.,skeptical adj. having doubts, not believing, doubtful, incredulous, unconvinced,e.g. be skeptical about / of ,Realizing his own limitations, he was skeptical about running for the Republican presidential nomination.,He cast a skeptical look at his partner.,bind v. (bound, bound) to tie things with ropes or strings,e.g. His hands were bound together and he couldnt move.,The prisoner was bound to a chair.,be bound to do something: certain or likely to happen,e.g. If you do not make any effort, you are bound to lag behind.,This is when my wife becomesopenly nowmistress of the garden.,pun: the clever or humorous use of a word that has more than one meaning,A consumer of vast quantities of vegetables, she does the thinning and hand-cultivating of the tiny plants.,As a person who eat a lot of vegetables, she grows the plants with her hands and picks out those unwanted ones so that there will be room for plants to grow.,Squatting, she patiently moves down each row selecting which plants shall live and which she will cast aside.,She crouched there and moves from row to row, choosing which plants she will keep and which to pull up and throw away.,She looks,about,skeptically.,about: adv. in many directions; here and there, everywhere,e.g. Several children were running about on the beach.,Don t fling your clothes about on the chair ; hang them up.,She look around with,doubt,s,.,She,is,an,outspoken,truthful,woman, or she,was,until she,learned better,.,She is a woman who always says whats on her mind and always tells the truth. At least she was until she realized it was unwise to do so.,saying exactly what you think, regardless of the consequence,honest, saying only what is true,Tomatoes in damp soil,tend more to,get fungi.,fungi: plural noun form of “fungus”,If you plant tomatoes in the wet area of the garden, they are more likely to get fungi.,But by October nothing in the garden matters,so sure am I,that I will never plant,it,again.,But it is October and too late for anything in the garden to grow. I was so certain that I will never use the garden to grow things anymore.,glisten v. (of something wet) to shine,glitter v. to shine brightly with small flashes of reflected light,thrust v. to push or to move suddenly or violently in a particular direction,trusting life: full of life and growing vigorously,reflect v.,to show the image of somebody/something on the surface of something such as a mirror, water or glass,e.g. She could see herself reflected in,to show the nature of something or of somebodys attitude or feeling,e.g. His works reflects his interest in minority culture.,There are also certain,compensations, and these must be what annually turn my mind toward all that work.,There are things to make up for all the bad sides of gardening. I think these are what make me willing to work on it every year.,things that make a bad situation better,In some,pocket,of the mind there may even be a tendency to change this vision into a personal,reassurance,that all this healthy growth, this orderliness and thrusting life must somehow reflect similar movements in ones own spirit.,Whenever I see this beautiful, well-organized and arranged garden which is full of life and where everything is growing so vigorously, in a certain area of my mind I tend to believe so as to comfort myself that there is something similar in my mind.,a small group or area that is different from its surroundings,the fact of giving advice or help that takes away a persons fears or doubts,irritated,time-consuming,arena,s,triving,cease,As it is, April is for getting irritated all over again at this,pointless, time-consuming hobby.,Part ,(para,s,. 11-12),conclusion,Gardening keeps people,hopeful,for the future, even in the coldest days of December.,