今天新加坡教育网选取了一篇学校考试的阅读题(题目)进行分析，根据O-level考题的侧重点、关键词进行详细剖解。希望对大家有所帮助。
This extract is selected as one of the common test passages for O Level English. Casting aside the demonic spectre of time constraint, we could read this piece in a more relaxed state of mind, and hopefully be able analyse and appreciate it better.
The key words in bold form are the ones that the examiner has once set to test students’ understanding of the thematic issues, the words’ literal meanings as well as the author’s intent and style. My analysis focuses on these key elements and I hope you read it while thinking deeply.
原文节选与分析点评
Analysis & Comments
01
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land.
The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.
There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.
It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at thefutility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen- hearted Northland Wild.
分析点评：
The passage opens with a spectacular description and paints a picture of a vast northern land, with a grandeur in sheer scale, yet desolate, barren, and hollow with extreme coldness. The ominous atmosphere often associated with the Great Wilderness seeps into the very existence of the spruces—there seems to be an air of unfriendliness, and even hostility, about these trees, since they silently “frowned” upon whoever passing the land.
The fury and brutality of the northern winds are captured in the postures of the trees, as they “lean towards each other” for supportive defence against the assaults of raw elemental forces, or, perhaps, they are powerless to be bent into a skewed position at the onslaught of sheer natural power. The word “strip” also underscores the unforgiving savagery with which the winds exert their dominance over the spruces, which are left pitifully bare.
Moving onto a wider angle, we are presented with a more comprehensive sketch of the landscape: there is little sound, and the entire land is deadly quiet. Silence “reigned”, like a living presence, an omnipresent being, a monarch; it is no longer a passive state or a mere description. The primacy of natural forces creates, enacts and maintains the silence, and the absence of sounds is intimidating— it demands subjugation and submission— hence we readers likewise feel the overwhelming power of this “vast silence” in the wilderness.
The land, so devoid of lively sounds, seems entirely sterile —and our assumption is confirmed by the next line: “The land itself was a desolation, lifeless”. And the passage proceeds to detail the sense of formidable rule exercised by Nature itself, Nature at its “frozen-heart” cruelty, Nature at its worst. Indeed, Nature is mocking the “effort of life” against its supremacy, its merciless domination, since any attempt to stay alive is “futile”, useless, and helpless, in its determination to crush all living beings.
Life, as a state of being, is feeble compared to the devastating forces of elements; furthermore, as a concept, life, is but a short phase of existence, defined by its transience, confined by the corruptibility of physicality, and the mutability of flesh, hence powerless in comparison to “eternity”—the profoundness of time, and the immensity of space—two winning cards of Nature, that gives it an indestructible, and infinite quality.
The shortness of life also limits its capacity to gain experience, and mature: whatever knowledge obtained over one being’s lifespan is but a fraction of the storage of knowledge accumulated over generations of living beings; and all that is known to the living, is subsumed, ultimately, under the domain of all the knowledge that ever exists controlled by Nature.
So Nature’s “wisdom” is unparalleled, as its is the sum of ours all, and many it knows have not yet been revealed to us—things in the past, present, and future; things mysterious and obscure. Hence, to us, Nature is a “sphinx”, the mythical creature symbolising the unknown and the wise, its enigma forever captivating, drawing us, irresistibly, into its orbit of mystery, potentially deadly, but nonetheless enthralling.
02
But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind.
The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surgedlike a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box.
There were other things on the sled--blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box…
分析点评：
After two long paragraphs, the impression of the North that is cold and menacing is established; yet the starting line of this paragraph subverts the sense of despair ensuing from the absence of life on the land—perhaps astoundingly, life still exists—and more than mere survival, life rises up against Nature’s threat of death, and rebels “defiantly”.
All of a sudden, a lively image of wolf-dogs running upon the ice is conjured up, and the very physicality of movement signifies the strength of life against all odds. The tenacity at which beings cling to life is made concrete in the dogs’ breath, whose ethereal insubstantiality is transformed into a more tangible, material reality, into “spumes of vapour” visible to human eyes. Life, as represented in the breath of “vapour”, is stubborn, and forceful—it throbs with vivacity—as the word “spout” denotes “sending out ... forcibly in a stream”.
The other two instances that imply the adamant, unpromising strength of life are also at work here. The word “stout” which describes the wood is an allusion to the firm, sturdy build of the dogs pulling the wood, and the “surge” of snow reflects the speed at which the sledge sweeps across the land, as well as the depth of the accumulated snow which flies up like waves breaking upon stony shores, both of which reinforce the characterisation of the “defiant”, vigorous dogs which unrelentingly plow through the deep snow against the overwhelming Nature.
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