2016年11月5日新SAT閱讀真題-第1篇
參考閱讀：
Unlike some crustaceans, who are coldly indifferent to the welfare of their offspring, the mamma lobster keeps her little brood about her until the youthful lobsterkins are big enough to start in life for themselves.
-Crab, Shrimp, and Lobster Lore William B. Lord 1867
The birth of Ruth Thomas was not the easiest on record. She was born during a week of legendary, terrible storms. The last week of May 1958 did not quite bring a hurricane, but it was not calm out there, either, and Fort Niles Island got whipped. Stan Thomass wife, Mary, in the middle of this storm, endured an unusually hard labor. This was her first child. She was not a big woman, and the baby was stubborn in coming. Mary Thomas should have been moved to a hospital on the mainland and put under the care of a doctor, but this was no weather for boating around a woman in hard labor. There was no doctor on Fort Niles, nor were there nurses. The laboring woman, in distress, was without any medical attention. She just had to do it on her own.
Mary whimpered and screamed during labor, while her female neighbors, acting as a collective of amateur midwives, administered comfort and suggestions, and left her side only to spread word of her condition across the island. The fact was, things didnt look good. The oldest and smartest women were convinced from early on that Stans wife was not going to make it. Mary Thomas wasnt from the island, anyway, and the women didnt have great faith in her strength. Under the best of circumstances, these women considered her somewhat pampered, a little too fine and a little too susceptible to tears and shyness. They were pretty sure she was going to quit on them in the middle of her labor and just die of pain right there, in front of everyone. Still, they fussed and interfered. They argued with one another over the best treatment, the best positions, the best advice. And when they briskly returned to their homes to collect clean towels or ice for the woman in labor, they passed the word among their husbands that things at the Thomas house were looking very grave indeed.
Senator Simon Addams heard the rumors and decided to make his famous peppery chicken stock, which he believed to be a great healer, one that would help the woman in her time of need. Senator Simon was an aging bachelor who lived with his twin brother, Angus, another aging bachelor. The men were the sons of Valentine Addams, all grown up now. Angus was the toughest, most aggressive lobsterman on the island. Senator Simon was no kind of lobsterman at all. He was terrified of the sea; he could not set foot in a boat. The closest Simon had ever come to the sea was one stride wide of the surf on Gavin Beach. When he was a teenager, a local bully tried to drag him out on a dock, and Simon had nearly scratched that kids face off and nearly broken that kids arm. He choked the bully until the boy fell unconscious. Senator Simon certainly did not like the water.
He was handy, though, so he earned money by repairing furniture and lobster traps and fixing boats (safely on shore) for other men. He was recognized as an eccentric, and he spent his time reading books and studying maps, which he purchased through the mail. He knew a great deal about the world, although not once in his life had he stepped off Fort Niles. His knowledge about so many subjects had earned him the nickname Senator, a nickname that was only half mocking. Simon Addams was a strange man, but he was acknowledged as an authority.
It was the Senators opinion that a good, peppery chicken soup could cure anything, even childbirth, so he cooked up a nice batch for Stanley Thomass wife. She was a woman he dearly admired, and he was worried about her. He brought a warm pot of soup over to the Thomas home on the afternoon of May 28. The female neighbors let him in and announced that the little baby had already arrived. Everyone was fine, they assured him. The baby was hearty, and the mother was going to recover. The mother could probably use a touch of that chicken soup, after all.
Senator Simon Addams looked into the bassinet, and there she was: little Ruth Thomas. A girl baby. An unusually pretty baby, with a wet, black mat of hair and a studious expression. Senator Simon Addams noticed right away that she didnt have the red squally look of most newborns. She didnt look like a peeled, boiled rabbit. She had lovely olive skin and a most serious expression for an infant. "Oh, shes a dear little baby," said Senator Simon Addams, and the women let him hold Ruth Thomas. He looked so huge holding the new baby that the women laughed-laughed at the giant bachelor cradling the tiny child. But Ruth blew a sort of a sigh in his arms and pursed her tiny mouth and blinked without concern. Senator Simon felt a swell of almost grandfatherly pride. He clucked at her. He jiggled her. "Oh, isnt she just the dearest baby," he said, and the women laughed and laughed.
He said, "Isnt she just a peach?"
Ruth Thomas was a pretty baby who grew into a very pretty girl, with dark eyebrows and wide shoulders and remarkable posture. From her earliest childhood, her back was straight as a plank. She had a striking, adult presence, even as a toddler. Her first word was a very firm "No." Her first sentence: "No, thank you." She was not excessively delighted by toys. She liked to sit on her fathers lap and read the papers with him. She liked to be around adults. She was quiet enough to go unnoticed for hours at a time. She was a world- class eavesdropper. When her parents visited their neighbors, Ruth sat under the kitchen table, small and silent as dust, listening keenly to every adult word. One of the most common sentences directed at her as a child was "Why, Ruth, I didnt even see you there!"
Ruth Thomas escaped notice because of her watchful disposition and also because of the distracting commotion around her in the form of the Pommeroys. The Pommeroys lived next door to Ruth and her parents. There were seven Pommeroy boys, and Ruth was born right at the end of the run of them. She pretty much vanished into the chaos kicked up by Webster and Conway and John and Fagan and Timothy and Chester and Robin Pommeroy. The Pommeroy boys were an event on Fort Niles. Certainly other women had produced as many children in the islands history, but only over decades and only with evident reluctance. Seven babies born to a single exuberant family in just under six years seemed almost epidemic.
Senator Simons twin brother, Angus, said of the Pommeroys, "Thats no family. Thats a goddamn litter."
Angus Addams could be suspected of jealousy, though, as he had no family except his eccentric twin brother, so the whole business of other peoples happy families was like a canker on Angus Addams. The Senator, on the other hand, found Mrs. Pommeroy delightful. He was charmed by her pregnancies. He said that Mrs. Pommeroy always looked as if she was pregnant because she couldnt help it. He said she always looked pregnant in a cute, apologetic way.
Mrs. Pommeroy was unusually young when she married-not yet sixteen-and she enjoyed herself and her husband completely. She was a real romp. The young Mrs. Pommeroy drank like a flapper. She loved her drinking. She drank so much during her pregnancies, in fact, that her neighbors suspected she had caused brain damage in her children. Whatever the cause, none of the seven Pommeroy sons ever learned to read very well. Not even Webster Pommeroy could read a book, and he was the ace of smarts in that familys deck.
As a child, Ruth Thomas often sat quietly in a tree and, when the opportunity arose, threw rocks at Webster Pommeroy. Hed throw rocks back at her, and hed tell her she was a stinkbutt. Shed say, "Oh, yeah? Whered you read that?" Then Webster Pommeroy would drag Ruth out of the tree and kick her in the face. Ruth was a smart girl who sometimes found it difficult to stop making smart comments. Getting kicked in the face was the kind of thing that happened, Ruth supposed, to smart little girls who lived next door to so many Pommeroys.
When Ruth Thomas was nine years old, she experienced a significant event. Her mother left Fort Niles. Her father, Stan Thomas, went with her. They went to Rockland. They were supposed to stay there for only a week or two. The plan was for Ruth to live with the Pommeroys for a short time. Just until her parents came back. But some complicated incident occurred in Rockland, and Ruths mother didnt come back at all. The details werent explained to Ruth at the time.
Eventually Ruths father returned, but not for a long while, so Ruth ended up staying with the Pommeroys for months. She ended up staying with them for the entire summer. This significant event was not unduly traumatic, because Ruth really loved Mrs. Pommeroy. She loved the idea of living with her. She wanted to be with her all the time. And Mrs. Pommeroy loved Ruth.
"Youre like my own daughter!" Mrs. Pommeroy liked to tell Ruth. "Youre like my own goddamn daughter that I never, ever had!"
小說評論
In her first novel, Elizabeth Gilbert embraces hard characters who inhabit a harsh environment -- twin islands off the coast of Maine. Gilberts title refers to young men who work in the stern of lobster boats. The title also alludes to the toughness of the male characters, hardened by weather and work and also by personal greed and a longstanding enmity between the two islands.
Yet the protagonist of Stern Men is a woman. Ruth Thomas not only survives among these hard-drinking, hard-loving men but also comes into power by organizing them economically. Even as a child Ruth is observant and smart. While education is the usual liberating trajectory for such children, Gilberts novel suggests that a mark of Ruths intelligence is to refuse college for the sake of living among the islands eccentrics. (Antiacademics and lovers of Forrest Gump will applaud the idea.)
In Stern Men, as in her earlier short story collection, Pilgrims, Gilbert relies on an unflinching sensibility to signal her authenticity as a fiction writer. Most of the stories in Pilgrims are thematically complex and convincing; even more impressive is their subtle and wonderfully unconventional form. They manage to be as open-ended as life and yet as satisfying as art. Both the story collection and the new novel use setting powerfully to define character, but Stern Men is more traditional in shape.
Without the delicate repetition and variation of, say, Hemingways, Gilberts simple subject-verb sentences sometimes produce a numbing rhythm, but her metaphoric writing flashes with welcome brilliance. A womans hair, for example, had silvered to the point that, when she turned her head in the sunlight, she gleamed like a swimming trout. At the beginning of each chapter, quotations about lobsters from 19th- and early-20th-century naturalists provide counterpoint to Gilberts contemporary prose.
Before Ruths time, the Ellis family, which owned granite quarries, dominated the geologically similar islands of Fort Niles and Courne Haven. Both Ruths mother and grandmother were virtually enslaved by the Ellis family as personal servants. Ruths own ambitions are mainly couched in the negative; she tells her surrogate mother, Mrs. Pommeroy: Im not going to do a single thing with my life that the Ellises want me to do. Thats my plan.
The islands and the continent -- Ruth is sent to the mainland for her high school education, paid for by the Ellis patriarch -- echo a familiar American dichotomy of country and city. To her beloved Mrs. Pommeroy, Ruth talks about her future in language thats reminiscent of the biblical Ruth: Ill stay here with you; Ill go where you go. . . . If theyre your people, theyre my people! Shes partly teasing Mrs. Pommeroy here and nudges her playfully, but the novel uses the scene seriously, as a touchstone to indicate that Ruth is going to be true to her nature.
Stern Men suggests the true good place is the rough, isolated, inbred birthplace -- the country as sentimentally superior to the city. Gilbert deftly portrays the aftermath of Ruths decision to remain on Fort Niles Island: confusion and boredom. Eventually Ruth is rescued from her dull routines by the quickening of sexual impulses. She falls predictably in love with the most striking young man available, Owney Wishnell.
While Hemingways characters embrace extremes of sex and booze out of existential despair, in Gilberts tough world Mrs. Pommeroy turns to liquor and lust with a sort of courageous gusto. Mrs. Pommeroy is happy -- at least until her husband, who liked to drink on his boat, drowns -- and she encourages Ruth to choose a similar life: Im happy that you want someone. Thats appropriate for a girl your age. At first Ruth expresses doubt: Oh, I dont know. Hes weird. He hardly ever talks. Owney is conventional, a strong, silent, handsome hero who comes from a family of expert lobstermen.
Although Ruth successfully defies a society that dictates she should desire a mainland college education, she falls for Owney. The pair are a good match in their rebellion: forbidden to be a stern man on a lobster boat, Owney must work on the boat of his uncle, a minister who travels from island to island performing funerals and weddings. Owney longs to claim his familial essence -- the Wishnells have always been great lobstermen: It was said that Wishnell boys were born with tentacles, claws and shells, which they shed during the final days of nursing.
Ruths romance seems further enhanced by the fact that the lovers live on separate islands, whose populations have long been engaged in sometimes deadly wars over lobster territories. In Romeo-and-Juliet fashion, they discount the hostility between the two islands to follow their desires. Their union ends not tragically but in greater prosperity.
Gilberts notion of gritty realism includes the occasional shocking detail. Such flourishes sometimes serve to maintain a readers excitement without offering a steadily deepening sense of character. One arresting scene depicts the discovery of the skull of Ruths grandmother in a mud flat, but how this image resonates in Ruths psyche is underdeveloped.
Stern Men offers some notable successes: Mrs. Pommeroy is a fascinating creation, and Ruth is a character of novelistic scope. One of Mrs. Pommeroys sons, traumatized by viewing his fathers corpse, spends his happiest weeks deep in mud, groping for the tusks of an elephant who reportedly died in a historic shipwreck. In her short fiction, Gilbert successfully marries such singular subject matter with structural experimentation; the novel makes its mark through vividness and toughness, but sometimes Gilberts reliance on these qualities seems less a badge of honesty than a mask. And the novel too often conjures up easily recognizable concepts or their colorful inversion.
Ruth is the business head; Wishnell is the intuitive fisherman, the silent, strong man. Mr. Ellis, the wealthy patriarch with the stern manner and ultimately tender heart, is too familiar. Nonetheless, while Elizabeth Gilbert is not the first writer to suggest that smart women have much to teach stern men, she puts the idea forward with rugged power. The stern men of the twin islands are ultimately bad boys who need a matriarch to take over the big house and teach them cooperation instead of bloody competition.
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