2021年英语专业八级考试真题及答案解析

(1)The gorilla is something of a paradox in the African scene. One thinks one knows him well. For a hundred years or more he has been killed, captured and imprisoned in zoos. His bones have been mounted in natural history museums everywhere, and he has always exerted a strong fascination upon scientists and romantics alike. He is the stereotyped monster of the horror films and the adventure books, and an obvious (though not perhaps strictly scientific)link with our ancestral past. (2)Yet the fact is we know very little about gorillas. No really satisfactory photograph has ever been taken of one in a wild state; no zoologist, however intrepid, has been able to keep the animal under close and constant observation in the dark jungles in which it lives. Carl Akeley, the American naturalist, led two expeditions to Uganda in the 1920s and now lies buried there among the animals he loved so well; but even he was unable to discover how long the gorilla lives, or how or why it dies, nor was he able to define the exact social pattern of the family groups, or indicate the final extent of their intelligence. All this and many other things remain almost as much a mystery as they were when the French explorer Du Chaillu first described the animal to the civilized world a century ago. The Abominable Snowman who haunts the imagination of climbers in the Himalayas is hardly more elusive. (3)The little that is known about gorillas certainly makes you want to know more. Sir Julian Huxley has recorded that thrice in the London Zoo he saw an eighteen-month-old specimen trace the outline of its own shadow with its finger."No similar artistic initiative,"he writes,"has been recorded for any other anthropoid (类人猿), though we all know now that young chimpanzees will paint'pictures'if provided with the necessary materials.”Huxley speaks too of a traveler seeing a male gorilla help a female up a steep rock-step, and gallantry of that kind is certainly not normal among animals. It is this"human-ness"of the gorilla that is so beguiling. According to some observers he courts and makes love the same way as humans do. Once the family is established it clings together. It feeds in a group in the thick bamboo jungles on the mountainside in the daytime, each animal making a tidy pile of its food—wild celery, bamboo shoots, and other leaves—and squatting down to eat it; and by night each member of the family makes its own bed by bending over and interlacing the bamboo fronds so as to form a kind of oval-shaped nest which is as comfortable and springy as a mattress. The father tends to make his bed just a foot or two from the ground, the mother a little higher, and the children are safely lodged in the branches up above. (4)When he walks the gorilla takes the main weight on his short legs and rests lightly on the knuckles of his hands at the end of his very long arms. When he stands upright a full-grown male rises to six feet, but with that immense chest he is far heavier than any normal man could ever be. Six hundred pounds is not uncommon. His strength is incredible—certainly great enough to take a man in his arms and wrench his head off. (5)Gorillas appear to talk to one another in high-pitched voices, not unlike those of women, or by smacking their lips or striking their cheeks, and the female, if alarmed, will scream. The male is capable of making a frightening demonstration in the face of danger. He stays behind while his family gets away, rising to his feet and uttering a terrifying roar. Sometimes he will drum on his chest and shake the trees around him with every appearance of uncontrollable fury. In extremity he will charge. (6)But all this is no more than shadow boxing as a general rule, for the gorilla is a gentle, kindly creature, a most forgiving ape who lives at peace with all the other animals, and his reputation for savagery and belligerence is nothing but a myth. When the animal charges, the thing to do is to stand your ground and look him in the eye. Then he will turn aside and slip away through the undergrowth.

(1)In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very soberly dressed. Every morning the two friends walked silently together until they reached the main street of the town. Then when they came to a certain fruit and candy store they paused for a moment on the sidewalk outside. The Greek, Spiros Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the fruits, and keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer, nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him. Then after this goodbye Singer crossed the street and walked on alone to the jewelry store where he worked as a silverware engraver. In the late afternoon the friends would meet again. Singer came back to the fruit store and waited until Antonapoulos was ready to go home. The Greek would be lazily unpacking a case of peaches or melons, or perhaps looking at the funny paper in the kitchen behind the store where he cooked. Before their departure Antonapoulos always opened a paper sack he kept hidden during the day on one of the kitchen shelves. Inside were stored various bits of food he had collected—a piece of fruit or samples of candy. Usually before leaving Antonapoulos waddled gently to the glassed case in the front of the store where some meats and cheeses were kept. He glided open the back of the case and his fat hand groped lovingly for some particular dainty inside which he had wanted. Sometimes his cousin who owned the place did not see him. But if he noticed he stared at his cousin with a warning in his tight, pale face. Sadly Antonapoulos would shuffle the morsel from one corer of the case to the other. During these times Singer stood very straight with his hands in his pockets and looked in another direction. He did not like to watch this little scene between the two Greeks. For, except drinking and a certain solitary secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the world. (2)In the dusk the two mutes walked slowly home together. At home Singer was always talking to Antonapoulos. His hands shaped the words in a swift series of designs. His face was eager and his gray-green eyes sparkled brightly. With his thin, strong hands he told Antonapoulos all that had happened during the day. (3)When back at home, Antonapoulos sat back lazily and looked at Singer. It was seldom that he ever moved his hands to speak at all—and then it was to say that he wanted to eat or to sleep or to drink. These three things he always said with the same vague, fumbling signs. At night, if he were not too drunk, he would kneel down before his bed and pray awhile. Then his plump hands shaped the words Holy Jesus, or God, or Darling Mary. These were the only words Antonapoulos ever said. Singer never knew just how much his friend understood of all the things he told him. But it did not matter. (4)They shared the upstairs of a small house near the business section of the town. There were two rooms. On the oil stove in the kitchen Antonapoulos cooked all of their meals. There were straight, plain kitchen chairs for Singer and an overstuffed sofa for Antonapoulos. The bedroom was furnished mainly with a large double bed covered with an eiderdown comforter for the big Greek and a narrow iron cot for Singer. (5)Dinner always took a long time, because Antonapoulos loved food and he was very slow. After they had eaten, the big Greek would lie back on his sofa and slowly lick over each one of his teeth with his tongue, either from a certain delicacy or because he did not wish to lose the savor of the meal—while Singer washed the dishes. (6)Sometimes in the evening the mutes would play chess. Singer had always greatly enjoyed this game, and years before he had tried to teach it to Antonapoulos. At first his friend could not be interested in the reasons for moving the various pieces about on the board. Then Singer began to keep a bottle of something good under the table to be taken out after each lesson. The Greek never got on to the erratic movements of the knights and the sweeping mobility of the queens, but he learned to make a few set, opening moves. He preferred the white pieces and would not play if the black men were given him. After the first moves Singer worked out the game by himself while his friend looked on drowsily. If Singer made brilliant attacks on his own men so that in the end the black king was killed, Antonapoulos was always very proud and pleased. (7)The two mutes had no other friends, and except when they worked they were alone together. Each day was very much like any other day, because they were alone so much that nothing ever disturbed them. Once a week they would go to the library for Singer to withdraw a mystery book and on Friday night they attended a movie. Then on payday they always went to the ten-cent photograph shop above the Army and Navy Store so that Antonapoulos could have his picture taken. These were the only places where they made customary visits. There were many parts in the town that they had never even seen. The town was in the middle of the deep South. The summers were long and the months of winter cold were very few. Nearly always the sky was a glassy, brilliant azure and the sun burned down riotously bright. Then the light, chill rains of November would come, and perhaps later there would be frost and some short months of cold. The winters were changeable, but the summers always were burning hot. The town was a fairly large one. On the main street there were several blocks of two-and three-story shops and business offices. But the largest buildings in the town were the factories, which employed a large percentage of the population. These cotton mills were big and flourishing and most of the workers in the town were very poor. Often in the faces along the streets there was the desperate look of hunger and of loneliness. But the two mutes were not lonely at all. At home they were content to eat and drink, and Singer would talk with his hands eagerly to his friend about all that was in his mind. So the years passed in this quiet way until Singer reached the age of thirty-two and had been in the town with Antonapoulos for ten years.

(1)Like many historical films, Amadeus is far from a faithful account of what is known about the period and the people that it portrays. Events are exaggerated, condensed and simplified, and the complexity of real characters is reduced to suit the needs ofa dramatic contrast between good and evil. Such historical liberties are often bemoaned by experts, but few have seemed to mind the wayward story points of Amadeus. This is no doubt partly attributable to the film's high entertainment value: it is an unusually lively and funny historica film. It revels in the boyish humor and high spirits of its main character, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart(1756-1791), played with jubilant gusto by Tom Hulce. But the film's appeal is also attributable to Mozart's music. The composer's vulgar hijinks(狂欢作乐)serve as a contrast to the transcendent beauty of his music, beautifully performed on the soundtrack by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Thus, even the most stringent historical purists couldn't help but find something to enjoy in Amadeus. (2)For all its liberties, the story is actually based on a real rumor that circulated in Vienna in the 1820s. While gravely ill, the rival composer Antonio Salieri(1750-1825)confessed he had murdered Mozart decades earlier by poisoning him. Salieri was suffering from dementia(痴呆)at the time of this confession, and he later withdrew it, but some—including Mozart's widow Constanze—chose to believe the claim. More than 150 years later, the English playwright Peter Shaffer based the story of Amadeus not just on Salieri's confession but also the idea that Salieri had suffered from a deep and bitter jealousy of Mozart throughout the ten years that they both lived and worked as composers in Vienna. In the fun-loving Mozart, the story goes, Salieri saw a true genius— one who made his own talent and accomplishments appear mediocre—and this drove him on a vendetta(宿怨) that ultimately culminated in murder. (3)Shaffer's story makes for great drama, but it is, of course, biased against Salieri. In fact, at the time, Salieri was regarded as the more accomplished musician and composer. From the 1770s through the 1790s, he composed dozens of operas, many of them proving popular and considered innovative. A mark of his prominence was his appointment to the influential post of Kapellmeister, or musical director, to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph IⅡ.Salieri was also a teacher whose pupils included Ludwig Van Beethoven, Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert. In his private life, he may not have had Mozart's exuberance but nor was he the lonely and celibate man played with such convincing severity by F.Murray Abraham in Amadeus. Salieri was married at the time he knew Mozart, and he fathered no fewer than eight children. (4)If Salieri had little reason to fear or resent Mozart's success, there was naturally a degree of rivalry between two men working in the same profession and in the same city. Salieri(born near Verona)and Mozart (born in Salzburg)belonged to separate musical groups, and Italian and German opera fell into and out of favor during this period. The composers were therefore vying for work, including the prestigious post of musical tutor to the Princess of Würtemberg, which Salieri successfully attained. As composers, they saw their operas'debut side by side, yet there is little evidence of any animosity between them. Mozart did complain in a letter to his father that Joseph Ⅱ favored Salieri over all other composers, but that observation was an accurate one. Both Mozart and his father suspected that, behind the scenes, Salieri tried to undermine Mozart's success, but these were hardly unusual suspicions in a field so reliant on patronage. In public, fellow composers reported that Mozart and Salieri were friendly with another. Shortly after the premiere of Mozart's The Magic Flute, Salieri attended a performance with Mozart, and applauded warmly and vigorously. Thus, any ill feeling between Mozart and Salieri was borne by the former rather than the latter—contrary to what is strongly depicted in Amadeus—and it stemmedfrom Salieri's status and success rather than his perceived mediocrity. (5)Mozart's resentments were those of a younger man struggling for position in the world. Although he had talent, he spent many years struggling to find a suitable post or patronage. He and his father travelled widely during his youth, seeking a distinguished appointment but finding mainly low pay and occasionally humiliating circumstances. It was in the period after 1781, when Mozart defied his father and decided to live and work independently in Vienna that his career flourished. In the space of ten years, he found great success with the operas The Abduction from Seraglio(1782), The Marriage of Figaro(1786), Don Giovanni(1787)and The Magic Flute(1791).These were composed alongside his piano concertos, symphonies and chamber music, and together with his work as a performer and teacher, his success brought a high income. Mozart's money troubles were the result of excessive spending, and his volatile temperament, rather than any malicious schemes against him. His death, at the age of 35, was not considered suspicious at the time as he had been ill for weeks with a fever. While it is true that he had a commoner's funeral, in 18th-century Vienna this was not unusual for a man of non-aristocratic standing. It certainly was not a mark of his downfall or ignominy, as implied by the film. At his death, Mozart was second in stature only to Salieri as Vienna's most prominent musician and composer. (6)The drama of Amadeus stems not from historical accuracies, but from our contemporary knowledge that Mozart's music and reputation have survived for centuries—and continued to find new, zesty audiences—while Salieri's name and work quickly faded. Mozart's secondary status during his own lifetime thus appears unjust and unwarranted, and he is invested with the role of the struggling artist and unappreciated genius. This may be shaky history, but the film has enough laughter, conflict, romance and tragedy to please any opera lover, except perhaps for Salieri himself, who undoubtedly would have told the tale in an altogether different key.