Chapter 1 Prose Fiction 文学

Passage 1 The Furnished Room L950

I. Warm up

1.1 Vocabulary

Vocabulary　Definition

fugacious [fjʊ'geɪʃəs]

adj. 短暂的

lasting a short time

flit [flɪt]

v. 轻快地掠过

to move or fly quickly from one place or thing to another

transient ['trænʃnt]

n. 临时旅客

a person passing through or by a place with only a brief stay

vagrant ['veɪɡrənt]

adj. 流浪的

of or relating to a person who has no place to live and no job and who asks people for money

prowl [praʊl]

v. 徘徊

to move through a place or area especially while searching for something often in a quiet or secret way

mitigate ['mɪtɪɡeɪt]

v. 使缓和

to make （something） less severe, harmful, or painful

recline [rɪ'klaɪn]

v. 斜倚

to sit back or lie down in a relaxed manner

inert [ɪ'nɜːrt]

adj. 迟钝的

moving or acting very slowly

traverse [trə'vɜːrs]

v. 横越

to move across （an area）

poignantly [ˈpɔɪnjəntli]

adv. 辛酸的

in a way that has a strong effect on your feelings, especially when it makes you feel sad

cognizant ['kɑːɡnɪzənt]

adj. 认识到的

aware of something

grope [groʊp]

v. 探索；摸索

to search for something by reaching or touching usually with your fingers in an awkward way

smother ['smʌðər]

v. 抑制

to cover （something） in order to keep it from growing or spreading

beseech [bɪ'siːtʃ]

v. 恳求

to request earnestly

vivify ['vɪvəfaɪ]

v. 使具有生气

to make （someone or something） more lively or vivid

1.2 Passage Introduction

Background Information

欧·亨利（O. Henry）是美国作家威廉·西德尼·波特的笔名，是美国最著名的短篇小说家之一，曾被评论界誉为“曼哈顿桂冠散文作家”和“美国现代短篇小说之父”。其作品大多刻画平民百姓的艰辛、苦涩和无奈，笔调轻松，语气幽默，并以出人意料的结尾而闻名。“欧·亨利式结尾”已经成为文学术语，专指文学作品中出人意料的结尾。

其短篇小说《带家具出租的房间》（The Furnished Room），发表于1904年，是其代表作之一。故事发生在纽约市，描述四处漂泊、四海为家的人们的生活，是一个充满忧伤的故事。

Significance of Writer’s Works

欧·亨利作品的时间背景大多是他自己所处的时代——20世纪初期。许多故事发生在他居住了14年的纽约，大多讲述小人物的经历，例如职员、警察、女服务员等。无论是牛仔矿工，还是强盗骗子，他都写得栩栩如生、有声有色。故事紧紧抓住时代的脉搏，反映时代的变迁。作品语言精练、优雅，构思新颖，贴近生活。

1.3 Reading Skills

1.3.1 Skimming

It is important for the reader to know before reading a short story that the story normally consists of five parts: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Resolution.

Exposition, or the start, is where the characters and the setting are established. This part of the story introduces important information about the setting, characters’ backstories, prior plot events, and historical context.

When Rising Action is developed, drama, tension and conflicting are created. At first, the conflicts are not a major issue for the hero, who overcomes them with little difficulty. However, as the story unfolds, obstacles become more complex.

When the reader finally takes a deep breath after holding it in suspense, this is the most emotional part of the book—the climax. Usually, the main character comes face to face with the conflict and will change in some way.

Once the climax has been reached, the tension subsides and the plot moves toward its conclusion in Falling Action. It is when all loose ends of the plot are tied up and everything tends to slow down.

Resolution is the final section of the plot which records the outcome of the conflict and establishes some new equilibrium. The resolution is also referred to as the conclusion, the end or the denouement, where everything is wrapped up. Sometimes the story is finished off completely, answering every reader’s question. Sometimes authors leave a mysterious clue, to intrigue the reader. Or sometimes authors leave hints of a sequel.

1.3.2 Find the Keywords

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever—transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing “Home, Sweet Home” in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths.

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.

He asked if there was a room to let.

“Come in,” said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. “I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?”

The young man followed her up the stairs. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.

“This is the room,” said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. “It’s a nice room. It ain’t often vacant. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. Miss B’rettaSprowls—you may have heard of her—Oh, that was just the stage names... It’s a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long.”

“Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?” asked the young man.

“They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes.”

He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance... As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue.

“A young girl—Miss Vashner—Miss Eloise Vashner—do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.”

“No, I don’t remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don’t call that one to mind.”

No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.

The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep...

The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry...

Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud: “What, dear?” as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odour? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed him?

“She has been in this room,” he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched...

He traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognizant of the call... he found no trace.

And then he thought of the housekeeper.

He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could.

“Will you tell me, madam,” he besought her, “who occupied the room I have before I came?”

“Yes, sir. I can tell you again. ‘Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B’rettaSprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was...”

“What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls—in looks, I mean?”

“Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. “

“And before they occupied it?”

“Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children; and back of them was old Mr. Doyler... and further I do not remember.”

He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage.

The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.

Mrs. McCool sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.

“I rented out my third floor, back, this evening,” said Mrs. Purdy. “A young man took it...”

“Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am?” said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. “And did ye tell him, then?”

“Rooms,” said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, “are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool.”

“’Tis right ye are, ma’am; ’tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma’am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin’ of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin’ in the bed of it.”

“As you say, we has our living to be making,” remarked Mrs. Purdy.

“Yis, ma’am; ’tis true. ’Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin’ herself wid the gas—a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am.”

“She’d a—been called handsome, as you say,” said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, “but for that mole she had a-growin’ by her left eyebrow.

II. Text Structure

Fill in the blanks based on the context.

III. Character Analysis

Write down any of your analysis on characters in The Furnished Room, for example, what personality the character has, whom he/she represents, and what kind of relationship he/she has with other characters.

The tenant, a young man

Mrs. Purdy, the housekeeper

Eloise Vashner, the young man’s girlfriend

IV. Theme

Match the following sentences from the story with their corresponding themes.

Sentence

1. “…the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell.”

2. No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative.

3. And the man cried aloud: “What, dear?” as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about.

4. He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed.

5. “Rooms,” said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, “are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool.”

Theme

A. The pain from separation and loneliness

B. The indifference and cruelty from money-oriented urban life

C. The hopelessness from misadventure or failure

D. A focus on the great migration to cities, during which New York City was beginning to attract a significant number of adventurous spirits across the country.

E. The lost love

V. Rhetorical Analysis

Read the sample exercise, complete the rhetorical analysis and translate the sentences below.

Sample

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side.

修辞 simile

分析 The “population” is depicted as “time itself,” so they have the same characteristics of time: restless, shifting, fugacious. The simile highlights the unstable and restless life of these people, arousing readers’ pity and sympathy.

翻译 在纽约下西区的红砖房一带，绝大多数居民都如时光一样动荡不定、迁移不停、来去匆匆。

1. Homeless, they have a hundred homes.

2. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep.

3. The ebbing of his hope drained his faith.

4. Mrs. McCool sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.

VI. Language and Style

6.1 Language Focus

6.1.1 Inversion 倒装结构

Certain adverbs, adverb phrases, conjunctions （neither…nor, not only…but also, nor）, and negative words require inverted word order similar to that used in questions when they appear at the beginning of a sentence or clause.

特定的副词、副词短语、连词（neither…nor, not only…but also, nor）和否定词出现在一个句子的开头时，句子形成倒装，结构类似于疑问句句式。

Complete Inversion 完全倒装

Preposition （+noun） + Verb + Subject

介词（+名词）+动词+主语

例句 On the mountain lies a temple.

翻译 山上坐落着一座寺庙。

Predicative + Link Verb + Subject

表语+系动词+主语

例句 Gone are the days when we often played in the fields together.

翻译 我们经常一起在田野里玩耍的日子一去不复返了。

例句 Missing until recently were fossils clearly intermediate, or transitional, between land mammals and cetaceans.

翻译 显然，陆地哺乳动物和鲸目动物之间的生物，或者是过渡性的生物的化石一直缺失，直到最近才被发现。

Adverbs of time/place + Verbs （be/come/exist/fall/follow/go/lie/remain/seem/stand） + Subject

时间副词/地点副词+动词（be/come/exist/fall/follow/go/lie/remain/seem/stand）+主语

例句 I opened the door and there stood Michael, all covered in mud.

翻译 我打开门，迈克尔站在那里，全身是泥。

Incomplete Inversion 不完全倒装

Only + Adverbs/Adverb or prepositional phrases + Helping word + Subject + Verb

Only+副词/副词或介词词组+助动词+主语+动词

例句 Only in this city can you see such a beautiful sunset.

翻译 你只有在这个城市才能看到如此美丽的日落。

Negative words + Helping word + Subject + Verb

否定词+助动词+主语+动词

例句 Never could I find the picture.

翻译 我一直没能找到那幅画。

So + Adjective /Adverb + Helping word + Subject + Verb

So+形容词/副词+助动词+主语+动词

例句 So quickly did he run that no one could get him.

翻译 他跑得那么快，以至于没人追得上他。

Inversion in The Furnished Room

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.

分析 Prepositional phrase “to the door” appearing at the beginning of the sentence requires an inverted order of subject （housekeeper） and its verb （came）.

翻译 他按了第十二号房的门铃，一位管家走了出来，这位管家让他想起一只健康匮乏、饮食过度、把自己的壳都吃空了的虫子，现在在寻求可食的寄宿者以填补空缺。

Inversion Drills

Choose the best replacement for the underlined part in each sentence. Or choose the best answer to fill in the blanks.

1. Across the southern surface of the Moon’s far side sprawls an Asteroid-impact crater, 16 miles wide, called the Aitken Basin.

A. side sprawls an Asteroid-impact crater

B. side there sprawls an Asteroid-impact crater, it is

C. side, a sprawling an Asteroid-impact crater

D. side, an Asteroid-impact crater that sprawls

2. Among the schools that benefited from this generosity, were those that Mary McLeod Bethune opened and ran in order to provide a better education for Black students.

A. generosity, were

B. generosity was

C. generosity were

D. generosity were:

3. For a moment nothing happened. Then ______ all shouting together.

A. voices had come

B. came voices

C. voices would come

D. did voices come

4. The computer was used in teaching. As a result, not only ______ , but students became more interested in the lessons.

A. saved was teachers’ energy

B. was teachers’ energy saved

C. teachers’ energy was saved

D. was saved teachers’ energy

5. Not until I came home last night ______ to bed.

A. Mum did go

B. did Mum go

C. went Mum

D. Mum went

6.1.2 Semicolon 分号

A semicolon tells the reader that the clause that follows will specify consequences, restate meaning, or introduce a contrast. It separates equal and balanced sentence elements, such as main clauses and items in a series.

分号的作用：在其后的句子可以解释前句，重申前句的观点或叙述一个相反的观点。可分隔功能相同的句子成分，如独立的句子和并列成分。

Principal Uses of Semicolon 主要用法

Using a semicolon to link independent clauses

使用分号连接独立完整句

例句 Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur.

翻译 她的声音是从喉咙挤出来的；喉咙上好像粘了一层毛皮一样。

例句 They sing “Home, Sweet Home” in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

翻译 他们用爵士乐的调子唱着《家，甜美的家》；一个盒子就能装下他们全部的家当；宽边帽上缠着的装饰是他们的葡萄藤；租屋里的橡胶树就是他们的无花果树。

Using a semicolon to separate items in a series when they are long or contain commas, even with a coordinating conjunction

在一系列并列成分过长、包含逗号或在长成分间有并列连词加逗号出现时，可以使用分号代替逗号，将它们分隔开。此处的长成分包括独立完整句

例句 So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for.

翻译 他已经花了那么多时间寻找，白天向剧院经理、经纪人、剧校和合唱团打听，晚上混在观众中去寻找，从众星云集的大剧院到下流污秽的音乐厅都找过，他甚至害怕在这种音乐厅找到自己心心念念要找的人。

分析 本句中，分号隔开的长并列成分结构为“by...”，第一个结构内包含逗号。

例句 The custody case involved Amy Dalton, the child; Ellen and Mark Dalton, the parents; and Ruth and Hal Blum, the grandparents.

翻译 这个监护案涉及儿童艾米·道尔顿；父母艾伦和马克·道尔顿，祖父母露丝和哈尔·布卢姆。

分析 本句有三个被分号隔开的长成分，在最后一个分号后有并列连词and。此处使用分号代替逗号隔开一系列并列结构。每个并列结构中已包含用逗号隔开的同位语，若再使用逗号来构建并列关系，则会使结构混乱，对理解造成困难。

例句 Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.

翻译 这一带的房子里住过成百上千的住客，这些房子可以述说的故事也自然是数不尽的，而这些故事大多乏味无趣，这一点完全不用怀疑；若是在这些漂泊的过客离开后，在这里还找不到一两个鬼魂的话，那才奇怪呢！

Using a semicolon before a conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase linking two independent clauses

在连接两个独立完整句的连接副词或过渡性短语之前使用分号

例句 Most of the class went on the trip; however, Lily stayed at school.

翻译 全班大部分人都出去了；然而莉莉留在了学校。

Semicolon Drills

Choose the best replacement for the underlined part in each sentence.

1. As the researcher begins to examine his painting more closely, several surprising details spring out: the string on the lute is broken; the faces of the sundial appear not to match; and the globe is tipped upside-down, though several regions are labeled right-side up.

A. broken; the faces of the sundial appear not to match; and the globe is tipped upside-down, though

B. broken; the faces of the sundial appear not to match; and the globe is tipped upside-down; though

C. broken; the faces of the sundial appear not to match, and the globe is tipped upside-down, though

D. broken, the faces of the sundial appear not to match; and the globe is tipped upside-down, though

2. Mang people think taxes are too high, consequently, some of those people do not report all the money they earn.

A. high, consequently, some of those people do not report

B. high, therefore, some of those people do not report

C. high; consequently, some do not report

D. high, and therefore not reporting

3. Translators are not passive mediums through which essays pass during their transformations into other languages; rather, each translator is an active agent who makes his or her own artistic choices to enrich the text.

A. languages;

B. languages, however,

C. languages; and nonetheless,

D. languages yet

4. The 1974 film adaptation was recognized for following William’s novel to the letter, however, the movie was also criticized for being lifeless and dull.

A. letter, however,

B. letter; however,

C. letter, however;

D. letter however,

6.2 Language Analysis

Read the sample exercise, complete the language analysis and translate the following sentences.

Sample

It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter.

语法标签 定语从句，并列句

翻译 它好像已经植物化了，已经在这充满恶臭、阴暗的空气中退化成茂盛滋润的地衣或满地蔓生的苔藓，东一块西一块，一直长到楼梯处，踩在脚下犹如有机物一样黏糊糊的。

1. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.

2. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.

3. He traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognizant of the call... he found no trace.

6.3 Style and Tone

Fill in the blanks based on the italic hints provided in the following passage.

A typical O. Henry story, The Furnished Room manifests the devices and strategies observed in all his popular tales.

Though illustrated from the 　1　 perspective （whose point of view?）, the story sets a 　2　 atmosphere （an adjective to describe the atmosphere） with its heavily descriptive opening paragraphs. From these descriptions, the reader would see the tragic life among the ordinary, struggling urban transients of lower West Side in New York, and even hear their voices （“They sing ‘Home, Sweet Home’ in ragtime”）. The same employment of 　3　 （a rhetorical device） appears in the description of the mansion which houses the room the young man rents. The mansion is a place with “a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn,” the wall with “vacant niches” and the “foul and tainted air.” And the room is full of “pseudo-hospitality” and “the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage.” The mansion and the room are depicted so vividly that they manifest a human personality and help establish an aura of mystery and supernaturalism alongside the young man’s psychological disintegration. As he collapses into the suicidal, the room appears an active participant.

Also, the story is written in a 　4　 order （the order of the novel） intertwined with some flashback. At the same time, O. Henry deliberately withholds crucial information until the very end so as to create a trick ending. Thus, the story depends entirely on event, not at all on character. The young man meets the housekeeper and asks her about the missing girl. The housekeeper says she does not know the girl. The tenant recalls his five-month search for the girl. He smells of the girl in the room and asks the housekeeper again but she still insists she does not know her. Through these events and the flashback, the author shrewdly parcels out his information to continue the story. The technical skill works to evoke 　5　 （a kind of feeling） for the tortured young man caught in the throes of a villainous room whose foreboding pressure appears intent on destroying him.

This story of lost love and faded hopes tugs the reader’s heartstrings straightly with its sentimental and ironic tone, requesting simply that one responds with sympathetic passion rather than rational disbelief.

VII. Exercises

7.1 Vocabulary

Matching

Match the words with their synonyms.

______1. flit　　A. traveler

______2. prowl　　B. inactive

______3. transient　　C. lie

______4. cognizant　　D. fleet

______5. recline　　E. informed

______6. inert　　F. wander

______7. fugacious　　G. sad

______8. mitigate　　H. suppress

______9. poignant　　I. beg

______10. smother　　J. ephemeral

______11. beseech　　K. alleviate

7.2 Text Comprehension

Short Answers

Read each of the following questions, and then write down short answers.

1. In this passage, what are the characteristics of the young man which lead to his final ending? Support your answer with details from the passage.

2. What kind of people does the housekeeper represent? Support your answer with details from the passage.

3. Why do you think Miss Eloise Vashner had killed herself? Support your answer with details from the passage.

4. What does the furnished room symbolize? Support your answer with details from the passage.

5. What would happen if the housekeeper finds the young man die the next day? Support your answer with details from the passage.