阅读理解 Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards(内在部分)are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
In a newsreel theatre the other day I saw a picture of a man who had developed the soap bubble to a higher point than it had ever before reached. He had become the ace soap bubble blower of America, had perfected the business of blowing bubbles, refined it, doubled it, squared it, and had even worked himself up into a convenient lather. The effect was not pretty. Some of the bubbles were too big to be beautiful, and the blower was always jumping into them or out of them, or playing some sort of unattractive trick with them. It was, if anything, a rather repulsive sight. Humor is a little like that; it won't stand much blowing up, and it won't stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had best respect. Essentially, it is a complete mystery. A human frame convulsed with laughter, and the laughter becoming mysterious and uncontrollable, is as far out of balance as one shaken with the hiccoughs or in the throes of a sneezing fit.
One of the things commonly said about humorists is that they are really very sad people—clowns with a breaking heart. There is some truth in it, but it is badly stated. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that there is a deep vein of melancholy running through everyone's life and that the humorist, perhaps more sensible of it than some others, compensates for it actively and positively. Humorists fatten on trouble. They have always made trouble pay. They struggle along with a good will and endure pain cheerfully, knowing how well it will serve them in the sweet by and by. You find them wrestling with foreign languages, fighting folding ironing boards and swollen drainpipes, suffering the terrible discomfort of tight boot(or as Josh Billings wittily called them, "tire boots"). They pour out their sorrows profitably, in a form that is not quite a fiction not quite a fact either. Beneath the sparking surface of these dilemmas flows the strong tide of human woe.
Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts, with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don't have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the big hot fire, which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.
单选题 6.In the first paragraph the author wants to say that______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题可参照第一段的“Humor can be dissected...dies in the process(人们能够像解剖青蛙那样剖析幽默,不过经剖析,幽默则荡然无存)”。据此可知B项为正确答案。
单选题 7.The author uses the example of the soap bubble blower to show that______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题的依据句是第二段的“Humor is a little like that…it is a complete mystery.(幽默经受不住夸张,也经受不住过于直截了当)”。据此可知B是正确答案。
单选题 8.According to the author, humorists differ from ordinary people in the sense that______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题可参照第三段。幽默家对悲伤更敏感,主动积极地去弥补它。幽默家从困境中得到滋养,高高兴兴地忍受痛苦,用幽默的语言将痛苦表达出来,所以C项比A项恰当。B不正确,作者认为每个人的人生都有忧郁与悲伤。D不正确,作者认为说幽默家是小丑是不恰当的。
单选题 9.A humorous piece of writing can make the reader's emotional responses untrustworthy because______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】本题的依据句是第三段的最后句话“Beneath the sparking surface...human woe”。据此可知A项为正确答案。
单选题 10.The passage's success lies in its extensive use of______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】综观全文,作者多次使用暗喻的修辞手法,使文章生动、含蓄而耐人寻味,激发人的思考。parallelism的意思是“排比”;metaphor的意思是“暗喻”;metonymy的意思是“转喻”;simile的意思是“明喻”。只有B为正确答案。