Lesson Four Nettles第四课荨麻说明

1、Lesson Four Nettles Alice MunroObjectivesAfter studying this essay, students will be able to:1. grasp the theme of the short story (friendship and love, marriage and divorce, womens identity in society, conflicts between career and family, etc.)； 2. identify the regional identity of the writing(the

2、distinctive Canadian landscape, lifestyle and customs as revealed in the story );3. grasp the major characteristics of the writing (shifts in time, illusory simplicity, vivid depiction of natural scenes, probing of complicated feelings and subtle meanings of life in a simple plot, the employment of

3、symbolism, etc.);4. conduct a series of reading, listening, speaking and writing activities related to the theme of the unit. Time allotment: The teaching plan is to be carried out with 10 periods.About the Author and the Story “Nettles”Regarded by many critics as the great living writer of fiction

4、in Canada, Alice Munro has made her career out of short stories and often been compared to Chekhov.Born into a family of farmers in the small rural town of Wingham, Ontario, Munro began writing in her teens. She published her first story in 1950 when she was still a student at western Ontario Univer

5、sity. Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968. It received high acclaim and won that years Governor Generals Award, which is the highest literary prize in Canada. Her next work was Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories publishe

6、d as a novel, and it won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. Her other books are all short story collections: Something Ive Bee Meaning to Tell You (1974); Who Do You Think You Are? (1978, titled The Beggar Maid in English and American in English and American editions

7、); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); The Progress of Love (1986); Friends of My Youth (1990); Open Secrets (1994); and Selected Stories (1996). Who Do You Think You Are? And The Progress of Love won the Governor Generals Award. Her latest book, The short story “Nettles”, which first appeared in New Yorke

8、r in 2000, is included in this book. In this story, the author uses first-person narration. The plot of the story evolves around a middle-aged womans reunion with a childhood boy friend in 1979, but it moves back and forth between past and present. Like most other stories by Munro, the protagonist i

9、s a woman. The “I” in the story should not be taken as the author herself although the subject matter of Munros stories has often developed from her own experience. Munro has explained in various interviews that her stories are not autobiographical, but she does claim an “emotional reality” for her

10、characters that are drawn from her own life. Munros life experiences of growing up in a relatively poor provincial southwestern Ontario town during the depression, going through the rebelliousness and idealism of adolescence, discovering sex, leaving home, falling in love, getting married, having ch

11、ildren, getting divorced, and getting along in a variety of complicated relationships, all inform the fiction she creates. “Nettles” is no exception. Her fictional world ranges across the whole breadth of Canada, but her stories that take place in Ontario are rooted in her own formative past, repres

12、ent more evocative settings experience in childhood and are recollected by a perceptive adult memory. In Lives of Girls and Women, Munro explains through a character what she hopes to achieve in writing a work of fiction about small-town life in Ontario. The character works hard to portray not only

13、what is actually “real” about the town, but what is meaningfully “true”. In order to do so she must capture the dull, ordinary simplicity of her neighbors daily lives. This characters description of her efforts has often and rightlybeen used by critics to describe Munros own intentions as a writer:

14、“what I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together radiant, everlasting.” In “Nettles” we see evidence of Munros realistic technique: details that have been arranged and i

15、lluminated memorably. “Nettles” is one of Munros penetrating stories that have led to her being lauded as one of the finest living North American writers by critics and peers alike.Although nearly all of Alive Munros fiction is set in southwestern Ontario, her reputation as a brilliant short-story w

16、riter goes far beyond the borders of her native Canada. Her accessible, moving stories offer immediate pleasures while simultaneously exploring the complexity and beauty of everyday life. This aspect of her writing is also demonstrated in her short story “Nettles” Detailed Study of the TextWhy does

17、the author choose “nettles” as the title of the story?nettle: （寻麻）any of a genus of annual and perennial weeds of the nettle family with stinging hairs that make the leaves rough. The verb nettle can be used metaphorically to mean “to irritate or to annoy”. The phrase “grasp the nettle” means dealin

18、g with an unpleasant or painful situation firmly and without delay.Why does the author choose “nettles” as the title? What is the meaning? Lets bear these questions in our minds while we read the story. What is the narrative structure of the story?The author begins her story in a rather unusual way,

19、 and the plot of her story does not follow the normal chronological order. She starts her narration from 1979 in the brief beginning paragraph. But right after that she switches to “years afterward” in the second paragraph. and from paragraph 3 to paragraph 15 the tie is shifted to her childhood whe

20、n she met and made friends with a boy called Mike. from paragraph 16 narrative is shifted back to 1979 in time. As one of critics puts it, “the most noticeable about her technique in this latest collection of short stories which includes “nettles” is the way her narratives rock back and forth in tim

21、e. This allows her to infuse her stories with a sort of floating suspense, which falls halfway between the meandering spaciousness in novels and the epiphanies or shocking twists of more conventional short stories.”Para.1 I walked into the kitchen of my friend Sunnys house near Uxbridge, Ontario: a

22、province of south central Canada, between the Great Lakes and Hudsons bay and neighboring the United States. The famous Niagara Falls lie on the border of the two countries. The falls are made up of two parts, the smaller one is one the US side, the larger one on the Canadian side. In 1998 when I wa

23、s on a business trip to the States, I came to see the Falls. As we drove from the states to Canada, we came to the smaller fall first. From the distance, we already heard the thunder of the turbulent water. As it was already dark, we could not see it clearly but could feel the strong wind coming fro

24、m the fall. The next morning, after admiring the fall on the US side, we crossed the border and were amazed to find that the fall we just admired is nothing to be compared with the bigger one on the Canadian side. To put it this way, if you want to have a panorama view of it, you have to occupy a hi

25、gh ground some hundred meters away. From time to time, clouds of water vapors rise up and envelop the fall. If you want to take pictures, you have to wait for the clouds to disappear and you have to wear raincoat if you want to get near to it. What amazed me most is not only the size of the fall, bu

26、t also its crystal clear water and blue sky. That is the clearest water I have ever seen. Para.3In the countryside where I lived as a child, wells would occasionally go dry in the summer. This sentence brings the narrators memory back to the time when she was a child. The setting of this part of the

27、 story is the rural Ontario, the setting of most of her short stories. The part from paragraph 3 to paragraph 15 is narrated in a flashback, devoted to the narration of her childhood memories, her friendship with Mike. The descriptions of her childhood show that the narrator is very nostalgic. (恋旧)

28、we needed a good supply of water for our penned animalspenned animals: domestic animals such as pigs, sheep, fowls, etc. A pen is a small yard or enclosure for domestic animals. To Pen: is to confine or enclose (animals) in a pen.Para.5Mike Mecallum had a son who lived with him in hotel rooms or boa

29、rding housesboarding house: a private house where you pay to sleep and eat 供膳食的寄宿处 went to whatever school at handat hand: near in space or time. Here meaning “available”whatever school: public or private schoolsPara.6Mike and I climbed into the cab when it rained, and the rain washed down the windo

30、ws and made a racket like stones on the roof.cab: usually a taxi is called a cab in the North America. Here it refers to the part of a truck or bus in which the driver sits.The smell was of men their work clothes and tools and tobacco and mucky boots and sour cheese socks.mucky: (British) dirty, sta

31、ined for example with mud or oil.e.g. Coming home from play, the boy is mucky all over.sour-cheese socks: socks that smell like sour-cheese, perhaps because the socks or even the feet have not been washed for some time. （袜子发出臭奶酪的气味）Your boys are familiar with that.Sour cheese and sour cream are made

32、 sour by adding a kind of bacteria and they have a stronger smell than regular cream and cheese. For those who are not use to such food, they find the smell unpleasant. the skunk turned and sprayed him.skunk: a bushy-tailed animal, about the size of a house cat, commonly found in the North America.

33、It can eject a foul-smelling, musky liquid when disturbed or frightened. (臭鼬) Once being sprayed with its liquid, the smell is hard to get rid of. My mother had to stop whatever she was doing and drive into town and get several large tins of tomato juice, and Mike persuaded Ranger to get into a tub

34、and we poured the tomato juice over him and brushed it into his hair. It looked as if we were washing him in blood.Whom the pronoun “him” refers to? right, him refers to her dog Ranger. It is common for westerners to use “he” or “she” when talking about their pet animals. (she dog, he dog)Why did th

35、e mother buy tomato juice?From the text, we can guess that the tomato juice was used to clean the dog. Perhaps the juice could get rid of the foul-smelling, musky liquid the skunk had ejected on Ranger.Para.7 Our farm was small-nine acres.Nine acres are 54 mu. Owing to Canadas vast land and small po

36、pulation, (Canada is the largest country in the world in terms of area and it has a population of 28 million, compared with 88 million in Henan province alone) a farm of this size is considered rather small. Each of the trees on the place had an attitude and presence the elm looked serene and oak th

37、reatening, the maples friendly, the hawthorn old and crabby.In the eyes of the little girl, every tree existed like a person with distinct character and personality. In the previous sentence the narrator says that the farm was small enough for her to have explored every part of it. She was familiar

38、with everything on the farm including the trees. The use of personification of the trees reveals the close and harmonious relationship between nature and the narrator, as well as the imagination of a child.Para.8 The river in August was almost as much a stony road as it was a watercourse.watercourse

39、: a stream of water, river, brook. as much a stony road as it was a watercourseIn late summer seasonal dryness had shrunk the flow of water in the stream and so the watercourse became a stony road.八月的河道是条水道，几乎也是一条石头路 plowing through mats of flat-leafed water lilies, trapping our legs in their snaky

40、roots.plow: (plough). To plow (plough) through is to move with a lot of effort or force.Para.9 They might have followed the boys out from town pretending not to follow or the boys might have come along after them, intending some harassment, but somehow when they all got together, this game had taken

41、 shape.the subjunctive mood is used in this sentence for supposition, suggesting that the girl was not sure how the boys and girls got together, but she knew one way or another they all got together and made up this game of war. Pretending not to follow (Why did those girls pretend not to follow boy

42、s?)Because girls were generally shy and were not supposed to follow end some harassment: intend to do some trick on the girls企图欺负她们 They were good for only one throw.good for only one throw: they could be used to throw once and then would be broken. （in a snow fight, each snowball is good for only o

43、ne throw.）只能投一次Para.10 so that she could drag him away and dress his wounds as quickly as possible.dress: to clean and cover a wound with a bandagedress his wound: note the collocation here. 给他包扎伤口 There was a keen alarm when the cry came, a wire zinging through your whole body, a fanatic felling of

44、 devotion.“a wire zinging through your whole body” and “a fanatic feeling of devotion” are in apposition to “a keen alarm”, further explaining what this keen alarm was like.Zing: an informal word, meaning to move quickly, making a whistling noise, like the running of current (过电)He lay lip and still

45、 while I pressed slimy large leaves to his forehead and throat and pulling out his shirt to his pale tender stomach, with its sweet and vulnerable belly button.At this point of the game, the boy was supposed to be wounded, and by pressing slimy large leaves to his forehead, his throat and his stomac

46、h, the girl was pretending to dress his wounds.Belly button: 肚脐Para.11 The game disintegrated, after a long while, in arguments and mass resurrection.After a long while, the game broke up with the children arguing, probably about which side had won, and those who were supposed to have been killed al

47、l came back to life again.Resurrection: coming back to life. The Resurrection refers to the event of time when Jesus became alive again three days after his death. The occasion is celebrated on a Sunday in March or April known as Easter (复活节)Para.12 One morning, of course, the job was all finished,

48、the well capped, the pump reinstated, the fresh water marveled at.“Of course” is used to mean that it was natural for the job to be finished one day. When the job was finished, Mikes father would leave the farm and move on to another place for new jobs, and Mike would of course leave with his father

49、. The implied meaning of “of course” is that the girl had known this would happen sooner or later, but had no idea what it meant to her. (Perhaps she wished that the time spent on the work would be prolonged so that Mike would not have to leave so soon. She had not expected his departure would come

50、so soon.)Cap: to cover the top or end of sth, here to put a cover on the well. There were two fewer chairs at the table for the noon meal.中午吃饭时餐桌边少了两张椅子。 he liked to put ketchup on his breadThe girl noticed this unusual eating habit of Mikes and remembered it. So when she “saw a man standing at the

51、counter, making himself a ketchup sandwich”, in 1979, many years after they departed, she recognized him at once. the talk was mostly about wells, accidents, water tables.water table: the level below the surface of the ground where there is water. (地下水位 not 水表 water meter) The laugh had a lonely boo

52、m in it, as if he were still down the well.boom: a deep, hollow, resonant soundPara.13 He had other jobs lined up elsewhereHe had other jobs waiting for him to do in other places How all my own territory would be altered, as if a landslide had gone through it and skimmed off all meaning except loss

53、of Mike.The implied meaning of the sentence is that the impact of Mikes leaving on my life was beyond my imagination. I didnt expect that Mikes leaving would have such a tremendous power that it would change the meaning of my existence completely. All my thoughts were about loss of Mike. (I went bla

54、nk yet there was one thing in my mind, that is, Mike had gone.)Para.15 A common nameThis is an elliptical sentence. The complete sentence would be: Mike was a common name. A stupid flat-faced child with dirty blond hair.Another elliptical sentence. The complete sentence would be: that boy was a stup

55、id flat-faced child with dirty blond hair. My heart was beating in big thumps, like howls happening in my chest.howl: the long loud cry of wolves or dogs. I was so excited that my heart was pounding violently as if my chest was bursting with long loud cries.This is a vivid description of how one fee

56、l in excitement. You are recommended to remember them and use them in your own writing.Para.16 How is the time shifted in Paragraph 16?In this paragraph the time is shifted to that of the first paragraph: in 1979 the narrator was invited by her friend Sunny to spend a weekend with her family in Uxbr

57、idge. Even when she put on weight which she had done she looked not matronly but majestically girlish.matronly: adj. having the characteristics of a matron ( an older married woman, especially one with a dignified appearance)After women get married and have some kids, they usually look more matured

58、and confident. That is what matronly refers to.majestic: adj. having or showing impressive beauty or dignity; grand; Para.19 How is the time shifted again in this paragraph?The narration moves back a few years to when the narrator and Sunny were friends in Vancouver. (It is natural to recall the pas

59、t when you meet an old friend again, right?) Our pregnancies had dovetailed, so that we had managed with one set of maternity clothes.to dovetail: to fit perfectly togetherPregnancy is a special period of time for us women. In pregnancy, our figure change greatly. We grow heavy and clumsy and specia

60、l clothes are needed. It would be uneconomical if each of us buys new clothes since they are no longer needed afterwards. Therefore, we just borrow others clothes. For instance, my elder sister has kept her clothes for me and Ive left mine to my sister-in-law.In my kitchen or in hers, once a week or