1. What is Jane Eyre’s view of love as reflected in the excerpt?

When we connect death with life, we’ll find our life requiring more cherishment---love your life and love the people (be kind to others). Jane listened to the call of her inner world. Once caught it, she pursued it-- she fell in love with her master bravely. She cherished everything around her: the people, the plant, the animal and the whole nature. Besides Mr. Rochester, she was kind to her friends, her cousins, her students and the servants, even to the dog and the moorland. To her hostile enemy, Jane gave the same mercy: Mrs. Reed, her daughters and son, the evil mad woman of Mr. Rochester.

Jane was totally a speaker of the author Charlotte: what can we do before the hardness of life, including death? Charlotte learned to have (and maybe decided to love). The love consisted of two passions: the deep feeling to the human and the thankful cherishment of being. With constant sufferings in life, which were believed to be unbearable for most of us, Charlotte struggled to live her noble life, taking her responsibility in family and society, starving friendship and pursuing her career.

2. Why does Jane Eyre decide to stay with Mr. Rochester?

Jane Eyre decides to stay with Mr. Rochester because she deeply loves him. In fact, during the time when Jane Eyre lives in Thorn field a year ago, she falls in love with Mr. Rochester. She is attracted by Mr. Rochester’s charms. Later she leaves him because she loves him; she could not be Rochester’s mistress. She wants a sense of complete love. However when Jane hears that her lover Rochester becomes disabled, she desperately comes back to accompany Mr. Rochester. She decides to stay with Mr. Rochester because she always loves Rochester, the love never changes. Just as in this excerpt Jane says ―But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I do love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever‖.

For one thing, now Jane wants to accompany Rochester because she wants to soothe him. She wants to use her love to soothe Rochester; she wants to live with Rochester till the end of her life no matter how Rochester looks, how much he possesses. She loves Rochester deeply in her heart. As we all can see that Rochester loses his eyesight and strength as Rochester says in this excerpt, he is no better than the old lightning-struck tree. She knows the Mr. Rochester’s sufferings, and she knows Rochester’s love to her always never disappears. Now she wants to comfort Rochester. She says Rochester is no ruin, he is green and vigorous. She can not let her lover live alone in his rest time of life. For another, under this circumstance (Rochester’s wife is dead and he is also suffers a lot.), Jane thinks the love between Rochester and her is liberty and equal. As indicates in the whole book, we can find that Jane always pursues the equal and free love. Now she needs not to be a mistress and she doesn’t need to look up to Rochester. She can gain a completed love which she is always looking forward to achieve. She can be Rochester’s wife legally and morally. So she can stay with Rochester honestly.

In a word, Jane decides to stay with Mr. Rochester because she loves him deeply. It is love that leads Jane’s decision to stay with Rochester.

3. What kind of relationship between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester does the last paragraph of the excerpt suggest?

The last paragraph of this excerpt describes a scene of Jane and Mr. Rochester’s subtle movements for expressing their love. ―Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass around my shoulder: being so much a lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide, we enter the wood, and wended homeward.‖

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From just all these words, we may easily see the sincere love and forgiveness and support to Mr. Rochester. All the way, Jane holds the unchangeable views of respect, of love, of freedom and of equality, no matter when she is his governess or she refuses to his marriage or now she is his wife. In the past she and Rochester, She of course knows their great disparity of social status, a rich village manor owner and a low-grade governess. Nevertheless, there exists all along a standpoint in her mind, they were born equal.

Jane’s love is invariably loyal and faithful to Rochester by rejecting John River’s proposal. When he has terribly suffered the fire, she still accepts him, which is really a vowed love. Rochester as well expresses his deep love to Jane. This was her perfect love view, an equal love, a hundred-percent love, a respected love, a self-giving love.

Now they are equal spouses in status and also economy and love. For this moment Jane holds him to homeward, acting as both his prop and guide, which does not only means to guide his walk but also means she will support him and is willing to guide him to the happy life, no more his previous cold life. She hopes in the future they can carry each other as now.

Charles Dickens Great Expectations P100 1. Magwitch the “the convict” takes the risk of being “hanged” when comes back to London to see Pip. How do you evaluate this meeting?

First, to Pip it is a surprising meeting which happens so suddenly. Pip always regards Miss Havisham as his sponsor who gives money to him and he struggles for Estella. So when he meets Magwitch, he is very surprised. He never thinks that it was a convict who donates money for him to be the gentleman in the upper class. He can not receive this result. He can hardly imagine that it is the convict who helps him to be a member of the upper class. Then it is an unwilling meeting to Pip. According to this excerpt, we can see that when Magwitch eagerly wants to hang with Pip, Pip escapes several times. In Pip’s heart, Magwitch is just the man who he saves when he was only a young boy. Now, Pip is a gentle man with a lot of money and lives as the noblemen. He looks down upon Magwitch. So when he meets Magwitch, he feels anxious, dispirited and even abhorrent. As we can see in the following narrations ―All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointment, dangers, disgrace, consequences of all kinds, rushed in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew‖. To him, the meeting is just like a disaster.

To Magwitch it is a willing meeting which he has been looking forwards to for a long period of time. As from this excerpt, we can see that Magwitch is very excited and passionate to see Pip to whom he gives money to cultivate him as a gentleman. From the conversations between Pip and him, we can see that Magwitch works hard just for making money for Pip. As he knows the boy he subsidizes has been a very successful man in his mind. It seems that he is also a successful man as he crates Pip. He desperately wants to meet Pip and wants to hang with him for several times. So when he meets Pip, he shows his excitement, pleasure and proud as the text depicts, ―Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it!‖ So even when Magwitch knows that he will die soon, he comes a long way to see Pip. He regards himself as Pip’s second father and he prepares a lot to see Pip, his ―son‖. To him, it is a meaningful meeting. He comes to meet the great gentleman he creates with his own hands. He is happy, excited and proud.

2. What’s the meaning of “gentleman” in the contest of the novel?

In Victorian era, the essence of a gentleman is that he comes from a pure gens, or is

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perfectly bred, after that, gentleness and sympathy, or kind disposition and fine imagination. However, in Great Expectations, the word ―gentleman‖ has a derogatory meaning. The author uses a method called allegory to tell readers something.

The main protagonist and narrator Pip once was a poor, but sympathetic and warm-hearted boy. He was simple and innocent. He dreamed of being a blacksmith like his brother-in-law Joe and owes his living with his own hands. But after he met Estella, he couldn’t help but fell in love with her. However Estella despised him for his being poor. So he wanted to be a gentleman for sake of Estella. Then he got an inheritance from someone to finance him being a gentleman. Finally he becomes a gentleman, but his virtue disappeared. In his bid to be a gentleman transformed him to be miserable and unkind person. Although at that time he was wealthy, well-groomed and well-educated, he was a man with a fragile heart and powerful conscience. He was selfish and cool-hearted to his poor old friends. When Joe came to London to see him, he was unwilling and reluctant to meet him and was cruel to him. He was numb by his high social status and wealth then. Also he was not really happy at all. Here we can see the meaning of ―gentleman‖ in the contest. Pip’s definition of gentleman was narrowed by the influence of Miss Havisham and Estella who see social status, high education and material wealth as the essential components of being a gentleman.

In my opinion, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens challenged the predominant concept of being a gentleman in the Victorian Era by implicating that a gentleman can be judged not on their affiliation, social status or material wealth but rather by their character and personal accomplishments. In this novel there are two different characteristics between the poor Pip and the gentleman Pip. So it is the title ―Gentleman‖ that changes Pip from good to bad. The author wants to uncover some social problems by this. He wanted to criticize the dirty capitalism and the dark society, in this world people like to pretend to be gentlemen. 3. Character of Pip?

As a character, Pip’s two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he

understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herbert’s way into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pip’s main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism.

Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip’s desire for advancement largely overshadows his basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his

idealistic wishes seem to have been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pip’s oversimplified sense of his world’s hierarchy. The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that one’s social position is not the most important quality one possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.

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James Joyce Araby P171

2. Chief qualities of the boy’s character?

The boy is a natural character with which to begin a book because he possesses so many qualities attractive to readers. First, he is sensitive — sensitive enough to experience a wide range of feelings in spite of his tender age, including apparently contradictory combinations like fear and longing (at the end of the story's first

paragraph), anger and puzzlement (while falling asleep), and, especially, \of freedom\strange,\ Second, he is intelligent — and not merely in the conventional sense of the word. Sure, he is brainy enough to absorb much of the arcane information shared with him by the priest. (It makes sense that he has grown into the articulate storyteller who shares the tale of Father Flynn's influence upon him.) But the protagonist of \Sisters\think, and act — emotional intelligence, you might call it.

It is no surprise that a boy so sensitive, so intelligent, would find himself somewhat alienated from others — cut off, fundamentally, from his family and peers. He appears to lack altogether a connection with his uncle, much less Old Cotter, and it is said that he rarely plays \young lads of his own age.\Even when he is in the company of his aunt and the priest's sisters near story's end, the reader's main sense of the boy is that he is alone.

The school boy, in the story 'Araby\narrator of the story. He has not yet attained majority and is by nature bashful. He lived alone with his auntie and uncle and knew a few play-mates with whom he played in the street. Mangan's sister was perhaps only girl who lived in his neighborhood. He started appreciating her figure and dress without actually realizing that he had grown to like her. Being preadolescent person he had not become conscious that such a passion is just natural and it does not call for apology or regrets. If he had expressed his noble feeling of love for the girl he might have been able to overcome his bashfulness. Once he hesitated in expressing his sentiments, he developed an inhibition with the result that he was never able to make his feelings known to her. He went worshipping her silently. By chance, she happened to talk to him, he felt confused and did not know how to express himself. His desire to visit Araby became an obsession for him and he made up his mind to go to the market at the earliest and bring a gift for her. The hour that he reached Araby, was not at all fit for purchasing something really worthwhile. He experienced a sort of bitterness even worse than defeat. Being a lonely person, he is in search of a kindred soul. But lacking self-confidence he is not able to win her, as any other person without inhibition could have done so easily.The boy in the story is so bashful and inept in his relation with Mangan's sister only. He was quite a sociable boy in his own way and was good at studies. His auntie and uncle never discovered any oddity about him. He certainly proved quite helpful when he accompanied his aunt on her shopping trips. After his missed venture with Araby he lost interest in his studies. His teacher stared feeling concerned about him. But he did not know the real reason for this lack of interest in his studies. He is a hardworking and responsible boy and is capable of changing his attitude in keeping with the changing conditions. His unrequited love has proved disappointing experience for him, but certainly it would have made him wiser and more practical in future.

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Alfred Tennyson The Eagle 1. Make a list of adjectives which can describe your impression of the eagle.

(1)The image of the eagle：a bird of prey, of strength, size, gracefulness, keen vision and power of flight.

(2)In the poem the eagle is pictured as lonely.

(3)The bird is small against its surroundings(an azure sky and mountain).

(4)The bird is at great height or as the poem states, \ The eagle, at its great height, is a representation of a man at the peak of his life, clinging on desperately. (有时间就写下面的)

(5)The eagle is not only memorized Hallam, it’s also a description of Tennyson’s life and express his strong mind.(6)The eagle is proud even falls from the mountain top just as Tennyson.

2. Does Tennyson use many adjectives to describe the eagle? Why?

Yes. (1)The eagle in the poem is favorably presented as being strong and tough, proud and majestic, sharpeyed, alert and quick in movement. (2)The poet carefully chooses the words describing the eagle and his environment.

3. Why is the word“crawls”employed to describe the sea?

（1）The sea represent the universe. Similar to the eagle's smallness as compared to the sea, is man's as compared to the universe. The man is lonely in that he must enter and leave the world alone.

（2）The sea give the reader a sense of vastness and boundlessness, power and mystery. The wave of the sea is tremendous and turbulent. But in the eyes of the eagle, the wave of the sea is wrinkled and crawl. These devices make the whole poem appeal to the readers’visual as well as aural sense.

Break, Break, Break溅吧，溅吧，溅吧

1. Why does the poet describe the stones as “cold” and “gray”? It is an expression of his personal grief.

2. What effect do they joyful scenes in the second stanza bring to the whole poem? （1）In the narrator's dark hour of grief, the sun rises, children laugh, business goes on as usual. How could the world be so cruel and unfeeling? （2）In this poem, the poet’s own feelings of grief stands in sharp contrast with the carefree joys of the children at play and the young sailor at work, and with the unfeeling movements of the ship and the sea waves 3. Whose is the “vice that is still”?

His best friend, Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet.

Robert Browning My Last Duchess 我已故的公爵夫人

1. Why does the Duke want to show his guest his art collection? To boast and/or to threaten.

2. Why is the Duke dissatisfied with his last Duchess? What can you say about the Duchess’ personality from the Duke’s monologue?

(1)Because his last Duchess’s genuine kindness and innocent reveals he as a serf-conceited, cruel and tyrannical man. (2) kind, lively, artless

3. The Duke hints that his commands have something to do with the death of his last

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