第1个回答 2009-01-10
Questions on content:
1. What arguments are put forward by the abolitionists against the death penalty?
2. Explain why Barzun fails to take issue with their first two arguments.
3. Does the writer believe in the sanctity of human life? What is his stand on this question?
4. What exactly does he see as the purpose of the death penalty?
5. Explain Barzun's concern for the victim.
6. What is Barzun's reply to the abolitionist contention that since criminals are sick, they can be cured?
7. What does Barzun mean by "the moral basis of civilization"?
8. What are the specifics of the Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, Jr. case? Why was he freed?
9. What reforms in judicial procedures does Barzun suggest?
10. In paragraph 21 Barzun states a "model prisoner (is) first a contradiction in terms, and second, an exemplar of what a free society should not want." Why?
Ⅲ. Questions on appreciation:
1. Does the writer try to appeal to the readers' emotions or does he try to convince with logical facts? Cite example.
2. What does the vocabulary of this essay tell you about the audience to whom this essay is addressed?
3. What paragraph organizes the essay? Using this paragraph as a guide, divide the essay into its component parts.
4. What is the unifying theme of the essay?
5. What kind of detail is primarily used to develop the following paragraphs: 21, 23, and 25?
6. How is transition accomplished between the following paragraphs:
7 and 8, 14 and 15, 22 and 23?7. Is it fair to say that this essay is largely a seconding of the author's personal views?
8. Have you found any fallacy in the writer's arguments?
Ⅳ. Paraphrase:
1. The letters, sad and reproachful, offer me the choice of pleading ignorance or being proved insensitive. (para 1)
2. I am indeed aware that the movement for abolition is widespread and articulate (para 2)
3. I start out by granting that my conclusion is arguable (para 3)
4.there is pleasure in the spactacle of an airtight case (para 3)
5. The illicit jump we find here, on the threshold of the inquiry, is characteristic of the abolitionist (para 4)
6.No anger, vindictiveness or moral conceit need preside over the removal of such dangers. (para 6)
7.it might be extended to other acts that destroy, precisely, the moral basis of civilization (para 6)
8.The propaganda for abolition speaks in hushed tones of the sanctity of human life (para 8)
9.they will bless our arms and pray for victory when called up-on, the sixth commandment notwithstanding (para 8)
10.Absolute sanctity means letting the cutthroat have his sweet will of you (para 9)
11.The absolute sanctity of human life is, for the abolitionist, a slogan rather than a considered proposition. (para 9)
12.the "patient material" monopolizes the interest of increasing groups of people among the most generous and learned (para 12)
13.We are sorry, of course, but they do not interest science on its march. (para 13)
14.The remote results are beyond our ken (para 14)
15.Doubtless a nine-year-old mind is housed in that 150 pounds of unguided muscle. (para 15)
Ⅴ.Translate paragraphs 18 and 19 into Chinese.Ⅵ.Look up the dictionary and explain the meaning of the italicized words:
1. a sheaf of pamphlets against capital punishment (para
2. the movement for abolition is widespread and articulate ( para 2)
3. and it numbers such well-known writers as (para 2)
4. working to the same end (para 2)
5. must give pause to anyone (para 3)
6. I am still open to conviction (para 3)
7. the spectacle of an airtight case (para 3)
8. answer any more letters on this arousing subject (para 4)
9. in his harrowing volume (para 4)
10. as if the mere statement of it as an absolute (para 8)
11. they will bless our arms (para 8)
12. that misses the artist( para 9)
13. but it is not idle to speculate (para 14)
14. the boatload of persons dispatched by the skipper (para 14)
15. many of these killers are themselves "children, " that is, minors (para 15)
16. The stress of the social free-for-all throws them back (para 15)
17. Blackmailers invite direct retribution. (para 16)
18. as in that engaging case of some years ago (para 17)
19. the abolitionists dwarf or obscure (para 20)
20. despite the round of escape, recapture (para 21)
21. What a left-handed compliment (para 25)
22. fashioned the result (para 25)
Ⅶ.The suffixes -ist, -er, -or, -ee, -eer all form nouns meaning persons. Look up the dictionary and explain their different meanings. For each of the following words, give a corresponding noun ending in one of these suffixes:
1. adventure 11. drug
2. organ 12. column
3. create 13. murder
4. object 14. administrate
5. satirize 15. profit
6. sail 16. aggress
7. absent 17. parole
8. pamphlet 18. refuge
9. moralize 19. auction
10. edit 20. mountain
Ⅷ. Explain how the meaning of the following sentences is affected when the italicized words are replaced with the words in brackets. Pay attention to the shades of meaning of the words:
1. But this objection to barbarity does not mean that capital punishment ... should not go on. (savagery)
2. judicial error being possible, taking life is an appalling risk (mistake)
3. I entirely agree with the first pair of propositions (proposals)
4. No anger, vindictiveness or moral conceit need preside over the removal of such dangers. (vengefulenss)
5. But a man's inability to control his violent impulses or to imagine the fatal consequences of his acts should be a presumptive reason for his elimination from society. (results)
6. I do so because on this subject of human life, which is to me the heart of the controversy, I find the abolitionist inconsistent, narrow or blind. (contradiction)
7. These good people vote without a qualm for the political parties that quite sensibly arm their country to the teeth. (hesitation)
8. This is the moment when all the rationalized hypocrisies of civilization are suddenly swept away (rational)
9. I raise the question not ... but to introduce the last two perplexities that the abolitionists dwarf or obscure (difficulties)
10. They give no impression of ever having read what it is certain they have read, from Wilde's "De Profundis" to the latest account of prison life by a convicted homosexual. (an accused)
11. If the option is abolished, a demand will one day be heard to claim it as a privilege in the name of human dignity. (choice)
12. what is at fault in our present system is not the sentence but the fallible procedure. (erroneous)
Ⅸ. Replace the italicized words with simple, everyday words or expressions:
1. I am asked whether I know that there exists a worldwide movement for the abolition of capital punishment which has everywhere enlisted able men of every profession, including the law. ( )
2. also because I am not more sanguinary than my neighbor and I should welcome the discovery of safeguards ( )
3. I readily concede at the outset that present ways of dealing out capital punishment are as revolting as Mr. Koestler says in his harrowing volume, "Hanged by the Neck. "( ) ( )
4. The West today does not seem to be the time or place to invoke the absolute sanctity of human life. ( ) ( )
5. there were the seventy to eighty housewives whom George Cvek robbed, raped and usually killed during the months of a career devoted to proving his virility ( )
6. As to the extent that his villainies disturbed family relationships, or how many women are still haunted by the specter of an experience they have never disclosed to another living soul, these questions can only lend themselves to sterile conjecture. ( )( )( )
7. I happen to think that if a person of adult body has not been endowed with adequate controls ( )
8. Blackmailers invite direct retribution. ( )
9. While she excoriated him from her throne in the kitchen ( )
10. The abolitionists' advocacy of an unconditional "let live" is in truth part of the same cultural tendency that animates the killer. ( )
11. Both waste lives because hypnotized by irrelevant ideas and crippled by contradictory emotions. ( )
12. That the mere suggestion of such a law sounds ludicrous shows how remote we are from civilized institutions, and hence how gradual should be our departure from the severi-ty of judicial homicide. ( ) ( )
13. For there is one form of barbarity in our law that I want to see mitigated before any other. ( )
14. Brutish ostracism by everyone and a few years of solitary despair. ( )
15. Paroling looks suspiciously like an expression of social remorse for the pain of incarceration ( )
Ⅹ. Give the Chinese equivalents of the following words or phrases:
1. capital punishment
2. execution (summary)
3. judicial homicide
4. death penalty
5. euthanasia
6. seemly suicide
7. jurist
8. criminology
9. law officer
10. reformatory
11. testimony
12. penitentiary
13. life sentence
14. miscarriage of justice
15. acquittal
16. the court of criminal appeals
17. counsel
18. the jury system
19. evidence
20. prosecution
21. the supreme court
22. parole
23. parolee
24. the law-abiding
Ⅺ This essay is characterized by a sarcastic tone. Point out the places where sarcasm is used.
ⅩⅡ. The writer uses rhetorical questions to gain force. Try to pick them out.
ⅩⅢ. Point out what figure of speech is used in each of the following sentences:
1. The assemblage of so much talent and enlightened good will behind a single proposal must give pause to anyone ( )
2. The illicit jump we find here, on the threshold of the inquiry, is characteristic of the abolitionist ( )
3. The uncontrollable brute whom I want put out of the way is not to be punished for his misdeeds ( )
4. And again, do we hear any protest against the police firing at criminals ... often enough, with an excited marksmanship that misses the artist and hits the bystander? ( ) ( )
5. The inquiring mind also wants to know, why the sanctity of human life alone? ( )
6. Doubtless a nine-year-old mind is housed in that 150 pounds of unguided muscle. ( )
7. The apparatus of detention only increases the killer's antisocial animus. ( )
8. The testimony ... was enough to have him sent into quiet and brief seclusion. ( )
9. Brutish ostracism by everyone and a few years of solitary despair. ( )
10. Let us bear in mind the possibility of devising a painless, sudden and dignified death ( )
11. No anger, vindictiveness or moral conceit need preside over the removal of such dangers. ( )
12. How many women are still haunted by the specter of an experience they have never disclosed to another living soul ( )( )
ⅩⅣ. Read the following paragraphs and be prepared to discuss: 1 ) Do they appeal to emotions or to understanding? 2) Do they persuade or argue? 3) How are they developed?
l. The first of these arguments is plainly too weak to need serious refutation. All it says, in brief, is that the work of the hangman is unpleasant. Granted. But suppose it is? It may be quite necessary to society for all that. There are, indeed, many other jobs that are unpleasant, and yet no one thinks of abolishing them--that of the plumber, that of the soldier, that of the garbage-man, that of the priest hearing confessions, that of the sand-hog, and so on. Moreover, what evidence is there that any actual hangman complains of his work? I have heard none. On the contrary, I have known many who delighted in their ancient art, and practised it proudly.
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3. Most of us are members of the great unpolled majority, and it is my urgent suggestion that we take steps to keep it that way. "They (the IRS, the state motor vehicls bureau, the local credit union, etc., etc., ) already know more about us than they should, and the Social Security number is proving to be the greatest instrument for invasion of privacy since the invention of the telescope and the birth of J. Edgar Hoover. But there may still be time to forestall the tyranny of the pollsters. I confess that I am flirting with the idea that if you give a society enough rope it will hang itself. After all, wasn't it Patrick Caddell--a wunderkind pollster who, for all I know, may or may not be able to distinguish between Thomas Jefferson and Richard Goodwin--who almost single-handedly gave us Jimmy Carter for President? So some people say, though I am not sure that Caddell is anywhere near so eager these days to claim the credit.
ⅩⅤ. Topics for oral work:
1. Do you agree with Barzun that imprisonment is worse than death, that it violates the sanctity of human life?
2. Do you think it is possible to improve judicial procedures in capitalist countries so that chances of a miscarriage of justice, in capital cases especially, are significantly reduced or eliminated?
3. Do you agree with Barzun about the chances of "curing" criminals?
ⅩⅥ. Write a short essay on:
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