Unit 9
How I Found My Voice
读后
James Earl Jones
1 Today I am known for my voice as much as for my acting. It has been my good fortune to receive jobs such as the speaking role of Darth Vader in George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy and the voice-over announcer for CNN cable television. I also narrated Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait on a compact disc I recorded with the Seattle Symphony. Perhaps my greatest honor came when I was asked to read the New Testament on tape.
2 But it took a long time to believe such good things could happen to me. When I was a youngster I stuttered so badly I was completely unable to speak in public.
3 Since I was eight I’d had trouble speaking. It was so bad that whenever I stood up in class to read, the other kids snickered and laughed. I always sat down, my face burning with shame.
包袱的两种意思
4 I’m not sure what caud my stuttering. Perhaps it was an emotional problem. I was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, and when I was about five, I moved to live with my grandparents on their farm near Dublin in northern Michigan. It was traumatic moving from the warm, easy ways of catfish country to the harsh climate of the north, where people emed so different.
5 Fortunately, my granddaddy was a gentleman, a farmer who taught me to love the land. He was short and he had a prodigious amount of energy. He even built a church to plea grandmother, a fervent worshiper of the Lord. All sorts of people were invited to our little church; white, black and American Indian came together in a nondenominational fellowship. Granddad’s Irish heritage came out in his love for language; during the week he ud “everyday talk”, but on Sunday he spoke only the finest English.
肝疼是什么原因6 As much as I admired his fluency, I couldn’t come clo to it. I finally quit Sunday school and church, not wanting to be humiliated any more. All through my grade school years, the only way the teacher could asss my progress was for me to write down everything I had learned.
7 Oh, I could talk, all right. Our farm animals knew that. I found it easy to call the pigs, tell the dogs to round up the cows, and vent my feelings to Fanny, the hor who big brown eyes and lifted ears emed to express interest in all I said. But when visitors came and I was asked to say hello, I could only stand, pound my feet, and grit my teeth. That awful feeling of my voice being trapped got wor as I grew older.
8 Then when I was 14, Professor Donald Crouch came to our school. He was a retired college professor who had ttled in nearby Brethren, a Mennonite community. When he heard that our agricultural high was teaching Chaucer, Shakespeare and other classics, he couldn’t stand not being a part of our school. So he left his retreat to teach us English, history and Latin.
9 Donald Crouch was a tall, lean man with gray hair; English was his favorite subject, poetry was his deepest love. He’s been an associate of Robert Frost. He held a book of poems as if it were a diamond necklace, turning pages as if uncovering treasures. He memorized a poem every day, explaining that if he ever lost his eyesight he would still be able to savor all that beauty.
10 When he learned that I not only loved poetry but was writing it, we found a kinship. There was, however, one difficulty between us. Professor Crouch (we always called him that) could not stand the fact I refud to read my poems to the class.
内隐学习
11 制作简历的免费模板>吃什么补阳气最快 “Jim, poetry is meant to be read aloud, just like rmons,” he presd. “You should be able to speak tho beautiful words.”
12 I shook my head and turned away.
13 Then he tricked me. I labored long and hard on a poem, and after handing it in I waited expectantly for his critique. It didn’t come. Instead, one day as the students asmbled, he challenged me. “Jim, I don’t think you wrote this.”
14 I stared at him in disbelief. “Why,” I started, anger flooding me, “of cour I did!”
15 “Well, then,” he said, “you’ve got to prove it by getting up and reciting it from memory.”
16 By then the other students had ttled at their desks. He looked at me meaningfully and nodded. With knees shaking, I walked up before my peers.
17 “Jim will recite his latest poem,” announced Professor Crouch.
18 怎么屏蔽朋友圈 For a moment I stood breathless. I could e smirks and wry smiles on some faces. Then I began. And kept going. I recited my poem all the way through without hesitation or fault! I stood amazed and floated back to my desk in a daze, amid wild applau.
