The DamnedHuman Race 现代大学英语课件.ppt

Lesson 15 The Damned Human Race by Mark Twain I.Introductions I..About the author (P.461); 2. About the Text Both as a humorist and as an essayist of serious ideas, Mark Twain is a powerful writer. He is an honest and thorough critic who always brings a fresh perspective to things which are all too often taken for granted. True to this standard, “The Damned Human Race” is wonderfully thought-provoking and humane. To have a better understanding of this essay, it is perhaps necessary to go back to the 1890s, a period which was dark and gloomy for Mark Twain. First of all, because of unwise investment, he went bankrupt. And in order to pay off his creditors, he undertook a round-the-world speaking tour aimed at making some money. He had almost completed it when he learned that his favorite daughter, Susy, had died. This was a terrible blow for him. Before he could recover from this, his beloved wife, who had been his first reader and chief censor for the 34 years of their married life, died too. With her death, writing for him was essentially over. He became more and more bitter and his last writings were savagely satirical. Many believe therefore that this change of mood as reflected in the essay was mainly due to the author’s personal tragedies. But there are also serious scholars who think that more important reasons had to do with the whole social background—the three decades after the Civil War of the United States were characterized by cut-throat competition, child labor and sweat shops, robber barons and labor riots, corruption and unethical business practices spread of the jungle law and racial conflicts and imperialist wars. To Mark Twain, who had always been concerned with the problem of the human conscience, these things revealed the terrible deficiencies of the human race. To remedy this deplorable situation, he began to use his pen as a sharp lance first to pierce the boils of human pomposity. However, it is wrong