RAY BRADBURY (1920- )
S u m m e r R i t u a l s
最简单的对联
广式蒸排骨的做法Ray Bradbury is one of America's best-known and most loved writers of science fiction. His extensive publications include such popular no vels as The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), Fahren heit 451 (1953), Dandelion Wine (1957), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). He has also written dozens of short stories, poems, essays, plays, and radio and movie scripts (including the screenplay of John Huston's film version of Moby Dick). As a child, he escaped his strict Baptist upbringing through a steady diet of Jules Verne, H.G. W ells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, along with Buck Rogers and Prince Valiant comic books: "I was a sucker for lies, beautiful, fabulous lies, which instruct us to better our lives as a result, but which don't tell the truth." A frequent theme in his m any novels is the impact of sci ence on humanity: "My stories are intended," he claims, "as much to forecast how to prevent dooms, as to predict them." Bradbury's more recent publications include The Last Circus (1981), The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (1982), The Love A f f a i r(1983), Dinosaur Tales (1983), A Memory for Murder (1984), Forever and the Earth (1984), Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), Tire Toynbee Convector (1989), and A Day in the Life of Hollywood (1992). The author lives in Cheviot Hills, California, where he enjoys painting and making ceramics.
Prepa ring to Rea d
"Summer Rituals," an excerpt from Dandelion Wine, describes the comfortable ceremony of putting up a front-porch swing in early summer. Focusing on the perceptions of Douglas, a young boy, the essay clearly ts forth the familiar yet deeply significant rhythms of life in a small town. Before you read this lection, take a few moments to consider th e value of ritual in your own life: Can you think of any activities that you and your family have elevated to the level of ceremonial importance? What about holidays? Birthdays? Sporting events? Spring cleaning? W hen do the activities take place? Do the same people participate in them every year? W hy do you repeat the rituals? What purpo do they have for you? For others whom you know? For society in general?
Yes, summer was rituals, each with its natural time and place. The ritual of lemonade or ice-tea making, the ritual of wine, shoes, or no shoes, and at last, swiftly following the others, with quiet dignity, the ritual of the front-porch swing.
On the third day of summer in the late afternoon Grandfather reappeared from the front door to gaze renely at the two empty eye rings in the ceiling of the porch. Moving to the geranium-pot-lined rail like Ahab surveying the mild mild day and mild-looking sky, he wet his finger to test the wind, and sh
ucked his coat to e how shirt sleeves felt in the westering hours. He acknowledged the salutes of other captains on yet other flowered porches, out themlves to discern the gentle ground swell of weather, oblivious to their wives chirping or snapping fuzzball hand dogs hidden behind black porch screens.
"All right, Douglas, let's t it up."
In the garage they found, dusted, and carried forth the how-dah, as it were, for the quiet summer-night festivals, the swing chair which Grandpa chained to the porch-ceiling eyelets.
Douglas, being lighter, was first to sit in the swing. Then, after a moment, Grandfather gingerly ttled his pontifical weight beside the boy. Thus they sat, smiling at each other, nodding, as we swung silently back and forth, back and forth.笔记本电脑外接显示器
Ten minutes later Grandma appeared with water buckets and brooms to wash down and sweep off the porch. Other chairs, rockers and straight-backs, were summoned from the hou.
"Always like to start sitting early in the ason," said Gran pa, "before the mosquitoes thicken."
About ven o'clock you could hear the chairs scraping from the tables, someone experimenting with
a yellow-toothed piano, if you stood outside the dining-room window and listened. Matches being struck, the first dishes bubbling in the suds and tinkling on the wall racks, somewhere, faintly, a phonograph playing. And then as the evening changed the hour, at hou after hou on the twilight streets, under the immen oaks and elms, on shady porches, people would begin to appear, like tho figures who tell good or bad weather in rain-or-shine clocks.
Uncle Bert, perhaps Grandfather, then Father, and some of the cousins; the men all coming out first into the syrupy evening, blowing smoke, leaving the wo men's voices behind in the cooling-warm kitchen to t their univer aright. Then the first male voices under the porch brim, the feet up, the boys fringed on the worn steps or wooden rails where sometime during the evening something, a boy or a geranium pot, would fall off.
At last, like ghosts hovering momentarily behind the door screen, Grandma, Great-grandma, and Mother would appear, and the men would shift, move, and offer ats. The women carried varieties of fans with them, folded newspapers, bamboo whisks, or perfumed kerchiefs, to start the air moving about their faces as they talked.
津津有味是什么意思What they talked of all evening long, no one remembered next day. It wasn't important to anyone wh
at the adults talked about; it was only important that the sounds came and went over the delicate ferns that bordered the porch on three sides; it was only important that the darkness filled the town like black water being poured over the hous, and that the cigars glowed and that the conversations went on, and on. The female gossip moved out, disturbing the first mosquitoes so they danced in frenzies on the air. The male voices invaded the old hou timbers; if you clod your eyes and put your head down against the floor boards you could hear the men's voices rumbling like a distant, political earthquake, constant, unceasing, rising or falling a pitch.
Douglas sprawled back on the dry porch planks, completely contented and reassured by the voices, which would speak on through eternity, flow in a stream of murmurings over his body, over his clod eyelids, into his drowsy ears, for all time. The rocking chairs sounded like crickets, the crickets sounded like rocking chairs, and the moss-covered rain barrel by the dining room window produced another generation of mosquitoes to provide a topic of conversation through endless summers ahead.
Sitting on the summer-night porch was so good, so easy and so reassuring that it could never be done away with. The were rituals that were right and lasting; the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the dimness, the eating foil-wrapped, chill Eskimo Pies, the coming an
d going of all the people. For at some time or other during the evening, everyone visited here; the neighbors down the way, the people across the street; Miss Fern and Miss Roberta humming by in their electric runabout, giving Tom or Douglas a ride around the block and then coming up to sit down and fan away the fever in the cheeks; or Mr. Jonas, the junkman, having left his hor and wagon hidden in the alley, and ripe to bursting with words, would come up the steps looking as fresh as if his talk had never been said before, and somehow it never had. And last of all, the children, who had been off squinting their way through a last hide-and-ek or kick-the-can, panting, glowing, would sickle quietly back like boomerangs along the soundless lawn, to sink beneath the talking talking talking of the porch voices which would weigh and gentle
Oh, the luxury of lying in the fern night and the grass night and the night of susurrant, slumbrous voices weaving the dark together. The grownups had forgotten he was there, so still, quiet Douglas lay, noting the plans they were making for his and their own futures. And the voices chanted, drifted, in moon clouds of cigarette smoke while the moths, like late appleblossoms c ome alive, tapped faintly about the far street lights, and the voices moved on into the
UNDERSTANDING DETAILS
玻璃的玻组词
1. W hat are the main similarities and differences between Douglas and Grandfather in this essay?
How are their views the world the same? How are their views different?
2. From the scattered details you have read in this essay, describe Douglas's hou. How large
do you think the front porch W hat color is the hou? How many trees and shrubs surround it?
W hat part of your descripti on is bad on facts in t he essay? W hat part comes from inferences you have made your own?
3. How do the men differ from the women in this excerpt? Divide a piece of paper into two
蠢人自己骗自己columns; then list as many qualities of each gender as you can find. (For example, the narrator hears the men's voices "rumbling" like an "earthquake”; in contrast, the women move like "ghosts," their gossip "disturbing the . . . mosquitoes.") W hat other descriptive differences can you find between the men and women? W hat conclus ions can you draw from the differences?
4. How did the conversation blend with the surroundings in Bradbury's description?
ANALYZING MEANING
1. A "ritual" may be briefly defined as "a customarily repeated act that express a system of
values." Using t his definition, explain why the ritual of the front-porch swing is important to Douglas's family. W hat feelings or implicit values lie behind this particular ritual?
2. W hat other rituals are mentioned in this essay? How are they related to the front-porch swing?
To summer? To Douglas and his family?
工作不足
3. Bradbury helps us feel the comfort, warmth, and familiarity of the scene depicted in this essay
through the u of a number of original descriptive details: f or example, "summer-night festivals," "yellow-toothed piano," "rain-or-shine clocks," "syrupy evening," and "foil-wrapped, chill Eskimo Pies." Find at least five other descriptive words or phras, and explain how each enables us to identify with the characters and situations in this story. W hich of the five ns does each of the details arou in the reader?
4. In what ways do you think Douglas was "completely contented and reassured" (paragraph 12)
by the voices around him? W hy did Douglas feel this contentment would last "for all time"
(paragraph 12)?
DISCOVERING RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
1. Some of the author's ntences are very long and involved, whereas others are quite short.
W hat effects do the changes in ntence length have on you as a reader? Give a specific example of a shift in length from one ntence to another and explain its effect.
2. This descriptive essay is filled with many interesting similes (comparisons using the words like
or as) and metaphors (comparisons without like or as). For example, Grandfather standing on the front porch looks like Ahab, the possd a captain from Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick (paragraph 2) Later, Bradbury us a metaphor to focus his readers on "the night of susurrant, slumbrous voices weaving the dark together" (paragraph 14). Find at least one other comparison, either a simile or a metaphor, and explain how it works with the context of its ntence or paragraph. W hat type of com parison is being made (a simile or a metaphor)?
W hat do we learn about the object being described (for example G randfather or the night) through its association with the other reference (Ahab or voices weaving the dark together)?
3. W hat is the point of view of the author in this lection W ould the essay be more effective if it
were reported from the standpoint of Douglas? Of Grandfather? Of the women? W hy or why not? How does the author's point of view help Bradbury organize his description? Should the fact that Bradbury's middle name is Douglas have any bearing on our interpretation of this story?
4. Although Bradbury draws mainly on description to write th e essay, what other rhetorical
strategies work together to help the reader grasp the full effect of "Summer Rituals"? Give examples of each strategy.
IDEAS FOR DISCUSSION/W RITING
Prepa ring to W rite
List some of the most important rituals in your life: How many times a year do the rituals occur? W hat purpo do they rve? How do rituals help create a strong social framework in your life?
彩虹少年In your friends' lives? In society in general?
1. W rite a descriptive essay about a ritual that is significant your life, addressing it to
someone who has never experienced that particular activity. Include the people involved
and the tting. Try to u all five ns in your description.
2. Choo a ritual that is part of your family life, and write an essay describing your feelings
about this ceremonial event. Address it to someone outside your family. U similes and
metaphors to make your description as vivid as possible.
3. Explain to someone visiting Canada for the first time the value of a particular tradition in
Canadian society. Then, help this person understand the importance of that tradition in
your life.
