2. 职称英语
  3. (1)The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me

(1)The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me

游客2023-11-30  5
问题     (1)The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud cry of "Go away, child!Go away this instant! " and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently driving away a crowd of naked children. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle.
    (2)The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant — I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary — and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.
    (3)I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant — it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery — and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off: in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until his owner came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
    (4)But at that moment, I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes — faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjuror about to perform a trick. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all: The people expected it of me and I had got to do it: I would feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the White man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece: but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives", and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib: he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
    (5)But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.(Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.)Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds: dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him. [br] The essential point of the story is that
选项 A、the author regretted the streak of cruelty that had led him to shoot the elephant.
B、the author had to defend the Burmese crow by shooting the elephant.
C、circumstances can lead men to do more extreme actions than were necessary.
D、the ruling class has to behave in the way the conquered expect them to behave.
答案 D
解析 主旨判断题。在第4段的后半部分，作者形容自己“只不过是一个可笑的木偶(absurd puppet)”，而作为当地人的统治者，他不得不做那些当地民众希望他去做的事情，D为正确答案。
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