高级英语（下）The Company in Which I work.doc

高级英语（下） Lesson One The Company in Which I work 背景知识（Background knowledge） Joseph Heller himself has recounted the story of his early life in his latest book now and Then (l998). He was born in Brooklyn in 1923 and grew up on Coney Island. At the outbreak of World War It, he worked first in a navy yard and then enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces, training at bases in South Carolina before flying sixty missions as bombardier in B - 255 in North Africa and Italy. After the war he went through college and graduate study at the University of Southern California, New York University (B. A. 1948), Columbia (M.A. 1949), and Oxford (Fulbright Scholar, 1949-1950). Heller wrote out longland the first section of catch 18, the start of his war novel Catch - 22( 1961) . The extraordinary and sustained impact of that novel was only the beginning of a literary career that now encompasses eight major books as well as stage plays, screen plays, short stories, articles, and reviews. His other works include Something Happened (1974) Good as Gold (1979), God knows (1984) No Laughing Matter( 1986) Picture This (1988) Closing Times (1994), his posthumously-published novel Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000). Mr. Hellers literary achievement brought numerous awards, including the University of South Carolinas Thomas Cooper Medal in 1996. Mr. Heller died on December 14, 1999. 课文要义（Main idea of the text） From his own experience, Joseph Heller tells us what life is like to work in a company, and what kind of relationship exists between each other from the top executives to the bottom staff. Under the high competitive system and extraordinary pressure, most people have turned to be envious, fearful, frustrated, distorted, deceitful and disappointed. If anyone is lucky enough to be able to feel rejoiced and proud of his own achievement, yet, it lasts only for a moment. Most people are merely enduring their life in the company by doing what they are paid to do instead of doing some