单选题 American humor and American popular heroes were born together. The first popular heroes of the new nation were comic heroes, and the first popular humor of the new nation was the antics of its hero-clowns. The heroic and the comic were combined in novel American proportions in popular literature.
The heroic themes are obvious enough and not much different from those in the legends of other times and places: Achilles, Beowulf, Siegfried, Roland, and King Arthur. The American Davy Crockett legends repeat the familiar pattern of the old world heroic story: the pre-eminence of a mighty hero whose fame in myth has a tenuous basis in fact; the remarkable birth and precocious strength of the hero; single combats in which he distinguished himself against antagonists, both man and beast; vows and boasts; pride of the hero in his weapons, his dog, and his woman.
Davy Crockett conquered man and beast with a swaggering nonchalance. He overcame animals by force of body and will. He killed four wolves at the age of six. He hugged a bear to death; he killed a rattlesnake with his teeth. He mastered the forces of nature. Crockett's most famous natural exploit was saving the earth on the coldest day in history. First, he climbed a mountain to determine the trouble. Then he rescued all creation by squeezing bear-grease on the earth's frozen axis and over the sun's icy face. He whistled, "push along, keep moving!" The earth gave a grunt and began moving.
Neither the fearlessness nor the bold huntsman's prowess was peculiarly American. Far more distinctive was the comic quality, all heroes are heroic; few are also clowns. What made the American popular hero heroic also made him comic. Maybe, said Crockett, you'll laugh at me, and not at my book. The ambiguity of American life and the vagueness which laid the continent open to adventure, which made the land a rich storehouse of the unexpected, which kept vocabulary ungoverned and the language fluid—this same ambiguity suffused both the Crockett legends were never quite certain whether to laugh or to applaud, or whether what they saw and heard was wonderful, awful, or ridiculous.

单选题 What is the main opint the author makes in the passage?
A. American popular literature was based on the legends of other times and places.
B. American popular heroes were characteristically comic.
C. Davy Crockett wrote humorous stories about mastering the nature.
D. The stories of Davy Crockett reflected the adventurous spirit of early America.

单选题 Achilles, Beowulf, and other heroes are mentioned in Paragraph 2 to ______
A. conclude heroic deeds described in old world heroic legends.
B. show the role they play in the world legend history.
C. compare their popularity with that of the American heroes.
D. show their similar heroic nature with the American heroes.

单选题 Davy Crockett is an example of ______
A. a hero-clown.
B. a popular writer.
C. an old world hero.
D. a heroic theme.

单选题 Which of the following is the most well-known heroic act of David Crockett?
A. Saving the sun.
B. Rescuing all living things on the earth.
C. Killing four wolves.
D. Killing a rattlesnake.

单选题 In Paragraph 4, the author makes the point that ______
A. American writers strove to create a distinctively American literature.
B. American enjoyed laughing at other people.
C. Americans valued comic qualities more than heroic qualities.
D. American life was open to adventure and full of the unexpected.