Unit 9 What Is Happiness
Section One Pre-reading Activities
kule
II. Cultural information
understanding1. Quote
Happiness lies not in the mere posssion of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
— Franklin Roovelt
2. The Pursuit of Happiness
The Pursuit of Happiness is a 2006 American biographical film directed by Gabriele Muccino about the on-and-off-homeless salesman-turned stockbroker Chris Gardner. The screenplay by Steven Conrad is bad on the best-lling memoir of the same name written by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe. The film was relead on December 15, 2006,
by Columbia Pictures.
Chris Gardner is a bright and talented, but marginally employed salesman. Struggling to make ends meet, Gardner finds himlf and his five-year-old son evicted from their San Francisco apartment with nowhere to go. When Gardner lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm, he and his son endure many hardships, including living in shelters, in pursuit of his dream of a better life for the two of them.
bthSection Two Global Reading
I Text analysis
1. What’s the author’s answer to the question “What is happiness”?
According to the author, happiness lies in the idea of becoming, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing.
2. What’s the author’s purpo of writing?
caravaggio
To attempt a definition of happiness by tting some extremes to the idea and then working in toward the middle.
II Structural analysis
Divide the text into parts by completing the table.
Paragraphs | Main idea |
林肯公园 变形金刚1-2 | The author points out that when we are not sure what happiness is, we tend to be misled by the idea that we can buy our way to it. |
3-7 | The author offers a number of examples to show how this misconception of happiness gives ri to the “happiness-market” in a highly commercialized society (the United States). |
8-9 | The author suggests striking a balance between what Thoreau called the low levels and the high levels. |
10 | The author gives his understanding of happiness, in the light of the Founding Fathers’ belief that it is “in the idea of becoming”. |
| | 保险费会计分录
Section Three Detailed Reading
Text I
What Is Happiness?
John Ciardi
(abridged)
apply是什么意思1 The right to pursue happiness is issued to Americans with their birth certificates, but no one ems quite sure which way it runs. It may be we are issued a hunting licen but offered no game.1honest的反义词 Jonathan Swift emed to think so when he attacked the idea of happiness as “the posssion of being well-deceived,” the felicity of being “a fool among knaves.” For Swift saw society as Vanity Fair, the land of fal goals.
2 It is, of cour, un-American to think in terms of fools and knaves.all in2 We do, however, em to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made
it to Heaven when we posss enough.浙江二级建造师报名3
3 And at the same time the forces of American commercialism are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them — and to create them faster than any man’s budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is bad on a dedicated insatiability. We are taught that to posss is to be happy, and then we are made to want. We are even told it is our duty to want. It was only a few years ago, to cite a single example, that car dealers across the country were flying banners that read "You Auto Buy Now." They were calling upon Americans, as an act approaching patriotism, to buy at once, with money they did not have, automobiles they did not really need, and which they would be required to grow tired of by the time the next year’s models were relead.
4 Or look at any of the women’s magazines. There, as Bernard DeVoto once pointed out, advertising begins as poetry in the front pages and ends as pharmacopoeia and ther
apy in the back pages. The poetry of the front matter is the dream of perfect beauty. This is the baby skin that must be hers. The, the flawless teeth. This, the perfumed breath she must exhale. This, the sixteen-year-old figure she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever.
5 Once past the vaguely uplifting fiction and feature articles, the reader finds the other face of the dream in the back matter. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herlf in order to display that perfect figure. The, the chin straps she must sleep in. This is the salve that restores all, this is her laxative, the are the tablets that melt away fat, the are the hormones of perpetual youth, the are the stockings that hide varico veins.
6 Obviously no half-sane person can be completely persuaded4 either by such poetry or by such pharmacopoeia and orthopedics. Yet someone is obviously trying to buy the dream as offered and spending billions every year in the attempt. Clearly the happiness-market is not running out of customers, but what are they trying to buy?
7 The idea "happiness," to be sure, will not sit still for easy definitions: the best one can do is to try to t some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the middle.5 To think of happiness as acquisitive and competitive will do to t the materialistic extreme.6 To think of it as the idea one ns in, say, a holy man of India will do to t the spiritual extreme. That holy man’s ideal of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himlf. In wanting nothing, he lacks nothing. He sits immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body.7 Or nearly free of it. If devout admirers bring him food, he eats it; if not, he starves indifferently. Why be concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itlf a joy within him.8
