单选题 {{B}}Passage 2{{/B}}

My parents' house had an attic, the darkest and strangest part of the building, reach- able only by placing a stepladder beneath the trapdoor, and filled with unidentifiable articles too important to be thrown out with the trash but no longer suitable to have at hand. This mysterious space was the memory of the place. After many years all the things deposited in it became, one by one, lost to consciousness. But they were still there, we knew, safely and comfortably stored in the tissues of the house. These days most of us live in smaller, more modern houses or in apartments, and at- tics have vanished. Even the deep closets in which we used to pile things up for temporary forgetting are rarely designed into new homes. Everything now is out in the open, openly acknowledged and displayed, and whenever we grow tired of a memory, an old chair, a trunkful of old letters, they are cast into the dump for burning.
This has seemed a healthier way to live, except maybe for the smoke everything out to be looked at, nothing strange hidden under the roof, nothing forgotten because of no place left in impenetrable darkness to forget. Openness is the new lifestyle, no undisclosed belongings, no private secrets. Candor is the rule in architecture. The house is a machine for living, and what kind of machine would hide away its worn-out, deserted parts?
But it is in our nature as human beings to clutter, and we long for places set aside, reserved for storage. We tend to accumulate and outgrow possessions at the same time, and it is an endlessly discomforting mental task to keep sorting out the, ones to get rid of. We might, we think, remember them later and find a use for then, and if they are gone for good, off to the dump, this is a source of nervousness. I think it may be one of the reasons we drum our fingers so much these days.
We might take a lesson here from what has been learned about our brains in this century. We thought we discovered, first off, the attic, although its existence has been mentioned from time to time by all the people we used to call great writers. What we really found was the trapdoor and a stepladder, and off we clambered, shining flashlights into the corners, vacuuming the dust out of bureau drawers, puzzling over the names of objects, tossing them down to the floor below, and finally paying around fifty dollars an hour to have them cast away for burning.

单选题 Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 在文章第一段，作者叙述了他父母家的顶楼，称顶楼是整个楼房内最黑暗、最陌生的地方，只有在开口处搭上梯子才能上得去，顶楼里放满一些说不清名字的东西，可是又很重要，不能和垃圾一起丢弃，但是也用不着了。这个神秘的空间就是对这个地方的记忆，经过许多年以后，里面存放的东西一件件地被忘记了，但是，我们知道它们还在那儿，安全、舒适地隐藏在这所房子的结构中。其实，第一段谈的不是顶楼，而是在用比喻谈大脑的未知领域，这一段的用意直到最后一段才揭开。最后一段指出，在这里，我们应该从我们对大脑的了解方面吸取一个教训。我们以为自己起初就发现了(大脑的)顶楼——虽然那些被称作伟大作家的人不时提及它的存在，但是，我们真正发现的却是顶楼的开口处和梯子。然后我们就爬了上去，拿着手电筒向里面的角落里照，清除掉桌子抽屉里的灰尘，弄不清物品的名字，将它们投掷到下面的地板上，最后再以每小时50美元的价格雇人将它们清出去烧掉。作者的含义是，我们太急于揭示生活的秘密，将一切暴露在光天化日之下，不给自己的隐私留半点余地。

单选题 When comparing the new lifestyle with the old one, the author seems to assume a tone of ______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 作者在第二、三段谈到了人们生活方式的变化，在第四段作者指出，但是，人的本性是喜欢乱丢东西，我们希望有个地方留出来存放东西(根据上下文，这里当指喜欢有个顶楼存放东西)，我们喜欢积累东西，舍弃一些东西，费脑筋将要丢弃的东西分类会给人以不断的烦恼。我们以为自己将来还可能记起这些东西并再用它们，如果一下子丢掉，扔到垃圾里去，我们会感到不安。我想这就是为什么现在我们经常心里不安的原因。言外之意，过去有个顶楼可以存放东西，但现代生活去掉了这个顶楼，我们不知道将暂时不要的东西存放到何处了。这里的含义是，现代生活使得人不再有隐藏隐私的地方，一切都在光天化日之下，在作者看来，这是现代人经常感到焦虑不安的原因。