2. 职称英语
  3. The sudden death of an admired public person always seems an impossibility.

The sudden death of an admired public person always seems an impossibility.

游客2023-12-02  22
问题     The sudden death of an admired public person always seems an impossibility. People ascribe invulnerability, near immortality to our centers of attention. John Kennedy dies, and it could not happen. John Lennon dies, and it could not happen. Elvis, and Grace Kelly, and shock after shock. And now this death of a young woman by whom the world had remained shocked from the moment she first appeared before it, whose name contained the shadow of her end: Princess Di.
    But who would have believed it? People thought every thought that could be thought about Diana, but not death. She was beauty, death’s opposite. Beauty is given not only a special place of honor in the world but also a kind of permanence, as if it were an example of the tendency of nature to perfect itself, and therefore something that once achieved, lives forever.
    Her life never seemed as tragic as it was often made out—just sad, and a little off. She married the wrong man. Her in-laws could be vindictive. For every photographer eager to capture a picture of her in one of those astonishing evening gowns or hats, another was hiding in the bushes ready to bring her down.   
    One cannot think of any public statement of hers that was especially brilliant or witty. She was more innocent than clever; even her confession of an affair to a reporter sounded girlish. If pressed, few could say exactly what it was that made her so important, especially to people outside England, except for the fact that one could not take one’s eyes off the woman.
    Yet that was no small thing. Diana was someone one had to look at, and such a person comes along once in a blue moon. She had a soft heart; that was evident. She had a knack for helping people in distress. And all such qualities rose in a face that everyone was simply pleased to see.
    In a way, she was more royal than the royals. She had a higher station than the Queen of England; she was the nominal young monarch of her own country and of every other place in the world. She was the sentimental favorite figurehead, who was authorized to sign no treaties, command no armies, make no wars. All she had was the way she looked and sounded and behaved. No model or actress could hold a candle to her. She was the image every child has of a princess—the one who can feel the pea under the mattresses, who kisses the frog, who lets down her hair from the tower window.
    Her marriage was gone long before her death. As the years went on, it is likely that there would have been other romances after Dodi Al Fayed to tickle the throngs. Exactly how her life would have progressed is hard to imagine. She would have continued to be a good mother and a worker for the ill and the poor: she would have been pictured from time to time at a dinner party or on a boat. In older age she might have become the King’s mother, welcomed back into the royal family at a time of life that is automatically accorded status. How would she have looked? The hair whiter, the skin a bit more lined, but the eyes would still have had that sweet mixture of kindness and longing. By then the story of her and Charles, the scandals and accusations, might have been lost in smoke.
    Yet if people now were asked how they will remember Diana, what picture among the thousands they will hold in their mind, it would not be Diana at an official ceremony, or with a boyfriend, or even with her children. It would be her on the day of her wedding, when all the world was glad to be her subject and when she gave everyone who looked at her the improbable idea that life was beautiful.  [br] Which of the following word is used literally, NOT metaphorically?
选项 A、Moon (Paragraph Five).
B、Candle (Paragraph Six).
C、Smoke (Paragraph Seven).
D、Subject (Paragraph Eight).
答案 D
解析 修辞题。“subject”有“国民，臣民”之意，正符合最后一段末句的语境，并不是修辞用法，故答案为[D]。第五段第二句用“comes along once in a blue moon”来表明戴安娜在人们心目中的地位，“in a blue moon”比喻“罕见的、稀有的东西”，因此“moon”在此表达的并非字面含义，故排除[A]；第六段倒数第二句指出，没有演员或者模特能够与戴安娜媲美，“hold a candle to somebody”的意思是“与某人相提并论”，“candle”并非字面含义，故排除[B]；第七段最后一句的意思是：到那时，她与查尔斯王子的恩怨也许早已烟消云散，“smoke”并非字面含义，故排除[C]。
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