2005 年湖北武汉大学基础英语考研真题 I. Cloze: (2×l0=20%) Fill in each numbered blank with ONE word given below on your answer-sheet, paying attention to the following: 1) 15 words are given, but only 10 (no more, no less) should be used and each can be used once only; 2) Forms should be corrected. The idea of“happiness,”to be sure, will not sit still for easy definition: the best one can do is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the_.To think of happiness as acquisitive and competitive will do to set the _extreme. To think of it as the idea one Senses in, say, a holy man of India Will do to set the_ extreme. That holy man’s idea of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. In wanting_ , he lacks nothing. He sets immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body. Or nearly free of it. If devout admirers bring him food he eats it; if not, he starves _ . Why be concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy within him. But, perhaps because I am Western, I doubt such catatonic （紧张症的）happiness, as I doubt the dreams of the happiness-market. What is certain is that his way of happiness would be torture to almost any Western man. Yet these extremes will still _ to frame the area within which all of us must find some sort of balance. Thoreau-a creature of both Eastern and Western thought had his own firm sense of that balance. His aim was to_on the low levels in order to spend on the high. Happiness is never more than partial. There are no pure states of mankind. Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in_ . What the Founding Fathers declared for us as an inherent right, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness. What they might have underlined, could they have foreseen the happiness-market, is the cardinal fact that happiness is in the_ itself, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing, which is to say, in the idea of becoming. A nation is not by what it possesses or wants to possess, but by what it wants to become. II. Explain the Following Idioms: (3×10=30%) 1. to face the music 2. to wash one’s hands of 

3. an Indian summer 4. a piece of cake 5. once in a blue moon 6. in the wake of 7. to make a go of 8. to have an ear for 9. neither here nor there 10. last but not least III. Paraphrase the Following Sentences or Short Passages: (40%) 1. Gray peace pervaded the wilderness-ringed Argentia Bay in Newfoundland, where the American ships anchored to await the arrival of Winston Churchill. Haze and mist blended all into gray: gray sky, gray air, gray hills with a tint of green. (Herman Wouk: The Winds of War) (8%) 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. (Jane Austin: Pride and Prejudice) (4%) 3. With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easily understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street comer by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged. (Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities) (12%) 4. This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. (Jack London: White Fang) (12%) 5. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. (Francis Bacon: Of Studies) (4%) IV. Reading Comprehension and Writing: (60 %) Read the following TWO passages, and then answer the corresponding questions on your 

answer-sheet. Passage One For a change from prevailing pessimism, I should like to recall some of the positive and even admirable capacities of the human race. We hear very little of them lately. Ours is not a time of self-esteem or self-confidence-as was, for instance, the nineteenth century, when self-esteem may be seen oozing from its portraits. Victorians, especially the men, pictured themselves as erect, noble and splendidly handsome. Our self- image looks more like Woody Allen or a character from Samuel Beckett. Amid a mass of worldwide troubles and a poor record for the twentieth century, we see our species-with cause-as functioning very badly, as blunders when not knaves, as violent, ignoble, corrupt, inept, incapable of mastering the forces that threaten us, weakly subject to our worst instincts; in short, decadent. Answer the following questions: 1. The writer says, “Victorians. especially the men, pictured themselves as erect, noble and splendidly handsome.” Could you use some examples to elaborate the point? (10 %) 2. Why do you think the writer compares our “self-image” to Woody Allen or a character from Samuel Beckett? Who are Woody Allen and Samuel Beckett anyway? (5 %) 3. In general, the writer does not sound very positive about the twentieth century. Write an essay of about 150 words to refute（反驳）his statement.(15%) Passage Two Far away from the operating room, the surgeon is taught that some deaths are undeniable, that this does not deny their meaning. To perceive tragedy is to wring from it beauty and truth. It is a thing beyond mere competence and technique, or the handsomeness to precisely cut and stitch. Further, he learns that love can bloom in the stoniest desert, an intensive care unit, perhaps. I do not know when it was that I understood that it is precisely this hell in which we wage our lives that offers us the energy, the possibility to care for each other. A surgeon does not slip from his mother’s womb with compassion smeared upon him like the drippings of his birth, it is much later that it comes. No easy shaft of grace this is, but the cumulative murmuring of the numberless wounds he has dressed, the incisions he has made, all the sores and ulcers and cavities he has touched in order to heal. In the beginning it is barely audible, a whisper, as from many mouths. Slowly it gathers, rises from the streaming flesh unit, at last, it is a pure calling---an exclusive sound, like the cry of certain solitary birds--telling that out of the resonance between the sick man and the one who tends him there may spring that profound courtesy that the religious call love. Answer the following questions: 

1. Please cite at least THREE figures of speech used in the passage. Be sure to identify the figures of speech you might have cited and then explain briefly how each of them is used in its own particular context. (10 %) 2. Write an essay of 150 words as a response to the following, in relation to the context where it comes. (20 %) “To perceive tragedy is to wring from it beauty and truth. It is a thing beyond mere competence and technique, or the handsomeness to precisely cut and stitch. Further, he learns that love can bloom in the stoniest desert, an intensive care unit, perhaps.”