如果你尝试了做题,会发现,即使你回去找到了文章中具体讲这个东西的位置,你也很难选出来一个选项。因为GRE阅读考察的并不是你能读懂某一句话或者它附近的几句,然后识别出选项中它的同义改写的能力——这是托福阅读考的事。我们要考点复杂的。
确切来说,我们是考一些——更本质的。同学们朋友吗,还记得我们的标题吗?这样可怕的文学评论类长文章,其实就只有一句话。
我们来看:
第一段
Despite winning several prestigious literary awards of the day, when it first appeared, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple generated critical unease over puzzling aspects of its compositions. 第一句说,Walker的这本书让人困惑。
In what, as one reviewer put it, was “clearly intended to be a realistic novel,” many reviewers perceived violations of the conventions of the realistic novel form, 第二句,怎么困惑呢?大家发现它违反了现实主义啊。
pointing out variously that late in the book, the narrator protagonist Celie and her friends are propelled toward a happy ending with more velocity than credibility, that the letters from Nettie to her sister Celie intrude into the middle of the main action with little motivation or warrant, and that the device of Celie’s letters to God is especially unrealistic inasmuch as it forgoes the concretizing details that traditionally have given the epistolary novel (that is, a novel composed of letters) its peculiar verisimilitude: the ruses to enable mailing letters, the cache, and especially the letters received in return. 然后pointing out后面一堆例子,说你看哪哪哪就违反了现实主义。 #哪1:我去,这么快就强行HE了,也太假了吧?(propelled toward a happy ending with more velocity than credibility) 哪2:怎么忽然她姐给她写信了,完全没道理啊?(with little motivation or warrant) 哪3:怎么还给上帝写信了!!太不现实了!(especially unrealistic)
戏有点多…总之一句话,就是说Walker这本书很多地方都不现实主义。
第二段
Indeed, the violations of realistic convention are so flagrant that they might well call into question whether The Color of Purple is indeed intended to be a realistic novel, especially since there are indications that at least some of those aspects of the novel regarded by viewers as puzzling may constitutes its links to modes of writing other than Anglo-European nineteenth-century realism. Indeed开头,和上一段方向一致。那我们觉得估计还说的是这个事(不现实主义)。第一句果然继续说违反现实主义特别明显(flagrant),以至于(so……that)让人觉得它可能根本就没打算现实主义啊,而是和现实主义之外的(other than Anglo-European nineteenth-century realism)写作方式联系。
For example, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has recently located the letters to God within an African American tradition deriving from slave narrative, a tradition in which the act of writing is linked to a powerful deity who “speaks” through scripture and bestows literacy as an act of grace. For Gates, the concern with finding a voice, which he sees as the defining feature of African American literature, links Celie’s letters with certain narrative aspects of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the acknowledged predecessor of The Color Purple. 然后后面例子就说了,它和非洲文学联系了,非洲文学果然就神神叨叨的/不现实(a powerful deity who “speaks” through scripture and bestows literacy as an act of grace)。
所以第二段,还是说Walker的这本书不现实主义,可能人家就没打算现实主义。