Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. And he surely deserves additional praise: the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.
I say clever because anti-slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War. H. B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.
Again and again, in the postwar years, Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race. Consider the most controversial, at least today, of Twain’s novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struck them as rude. Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums (贫民窟).” More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped slave, and many occurences of the word nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often severely criticized, never appears in it.)
But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point. The novel is strongly anti-slavery. Jim’s search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic. As J. Chadwick has pointed out, the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities, “the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual: Jim, the father and the man.”
There is much more. Twain’s mystery novel Pudd’nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day. Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior (低等的) to whites, especially in intelligence, Twain’s tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth. A slave gave birth to her master’s baby and, for fear that the child should be sold South, switched him for the master’s baby by his wife. The slave’s lightskinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slave-holding class. The master’s wife’s baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.
The point was difficult to miss: nurture (养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example— were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.
Twain’s racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called “nigger shows” in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.
Was Twain a racist? Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.
【小题1】 How do Twain’s novels on slavery differ from Stowe’s?

It was Saturday when the entire summer world was bright and fresh. Tom looked at the fence, which was long and high, feeling all enthusiasm leaving him. He dipped his brush into the whitewash before moving it along the top board of the fence. He knew other boys would arrive soon with all minds of interesting plans for this day. As walking past him, they would tease him for having to work on a beautiful Saturday—which burnt him like fire.
He, putting his hands into his pockets and taking out all he owned with the expectation of letting someone paint, found nothing that could buy half an hour of freedom. At this dark and hopeless moment, a wonderful idea occurred to him, pouring a great bright light into his mind. He took up his brush and continued to work pleasantly with calm and quietness.
Presently, Ben Rogers came in sight—munching an apple and making joyful noises like the sound of a riverboat as he walked along. Tom went on whitewashing, paying no attention to the steamboat. 
“Hello!” Ben said, “I’m going swimming, but you can’t go, can you?”
No answer. Tom moved his brush gently along the fence and surveyed the result. Ben came nearer. Tom’s mouth watered for Ben’s apple while he kept painting the fence.
Ben said, “That’s a lot of work, isn’t it?”
Tom turned suddenly saying “Here you are! Ben! I didn’t notice you.”
“I’m going swimming,” Ben said. “Don’t you wish you could go? Or would you rather work?”
Tom said, “Work? What do you mean ‘work’?”
“Isn’t that work?”
Tom continued painting and answered carelessly, “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Do you mean that you enjoy it?”
“I don’t see why I oughtn’t to enjoy it.”
“Does a boy have a chance to paint a fence frequently” said Tom.
Ben stopped munching his apple.
Tom moved his brush back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a little paint here and there. Ben watched every move, getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed1. After a short time, he said, “Tom, let me whitewash a little.”
Tom seemed to be thinking for a moment before he said, “No, Aunt Polly wants this fence to be perfect. If it was the back fence, maybe you could do it. But this fence beside the street is where everybody can see it. It has to be done right.”
“Oh, come on, let me try. I’ll be careful. Listen, Tom. I’ll give you part of my apple if you let me paint.”
“No, Ben, I’m afraid—”
“I’ll give you all the apple!”
Tom handed the brush to Ben with unwillingness on his face but alacrity in his heart. While the riverboat worked and sweated in the hot sun, Tom, an artist sat in the shade close by, munching his apple, and planning how he could trick more of the boys.
Before long there were enough boys each of whom came along the street; stopped to laugh but soon begged to be allowed to paint. By the middle of the afternoon, Tom had got many treasures while the fence had had three layers of whitewash on it. If he hadn’t run out of whitewash, he would have owned everything belonging to the boys in the village.
Tom said to himself that the world was not so depressing after all. He had discovered a great law of human action: in order to make a man cover a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
【小题1】By using “Tom continued painting and answered carelessly”, the author shows Tom ______ when he was talking to Ben.

1.George didn’t find it difficult at all, but it was really a c____task for me.

2. In modern times, people should pay attention to their psychological health as well as their p_______ health.

3. To e______ enough money to support a large family, Thomas had to work really hard.

4. Every Monday morning, we a_______ a school assembly on the school field.

5. On a_______, 90,000 people are killed in traffic accidents in China every year.

6. The company gave him a large sum of money in ____ (作为交换) for the information he provided.

7.The most likely ____ (解释) for his success is that he works harder than anyone else.

8. To her ____ (满意), her son spoke English fluently after spending two years in the US.

9. Lisa made Tom’s secret known to all, which made him _____ (尴尬的) in public.

10. The _______(教授), for whom students show great respect, teach his students not only what to learn but also how to learn.

Ⅱ 语言知识及应用 (共两节。满分35分)
第一节完形填空 (共10小题；每小题2分，满分20分)
阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从21—30各题所给的A、B、C和D项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Being probably the most complex female character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ophelia deserves special attention because she is treated as a substitute for Stowe’s intended audience. Ophelia    21    what Mrs Stowe, the author, considered a widespread Northern problem: the white person who opposes slavery but feels   22    prejudice and hatred in the presence of a black slave. Ophelia hates slavery, but she considers it almost   23    for blacks, against whom she harbors a deep-seated prejudice. And she doesn’t want them to touch her. Stowe stresses that much of Ophelia’s prejudice   24   from unfamiliarity and ignorance rather than from actual   25  . Because Ophelia has seldom spent time along with   26  , she finds them uncomfortably alien (不相容) to her.
But Ophelia seems to be one of the only characters in the novel whose character   27   as the story progresses. Once St. Clare puts Topsy in her care, Ophelia is forced to be in   28  with a slave. At first she begins to teach Topsy   29   out of duty. But Stowe suggests that duty alone will not root out slavery and that those against slavery must act out of love. Eva’s death leads to  Ophelia’s change, and she comes to love Topsy as an actual human being and not just a slave. She   30   her racial prejudice and offers herself as a model to Stowe’s Northern readers.
21. A. reflects               B. supposes             C. suspects                D. provides
22. A. various               B. arbitrary             C. racial                    D. awful
23. A. impossible          B. necessary            C. unfair                   D. important
24. A. suffers          B. differs                C. releases                 D. results
25. A. practice            B. performance       C. experience             D. application
26. A. slaves                 B. readers               C. Stowe                   D. characters
27. A. increases             B. disappears           C. refreshes               D. develops
28. A. trouble               B. danger                C. contact                  D. comparison
29. A. hardly                B. merely               C. specially               D. properly
30. A. hides                  B. overcomes          C. reserves                D. prohibits

Ⅱ 语言知识及应用 (共两节。满分35分)

第一节 完形填空 (共10小题；每小题2分，满分20分)

阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从21—30各题所给的A、B、C和D项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

Being probably the most complex female character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ophelia deserves special attention because she is treated as a substitute for Stowe’s intended audience. Ophelia    __21_ what Mrs. Stowe, the author, considered a widespread Northern problem: the white person who opposes slavery but feels __22_ prejudice and hatred in the presence of a black slave. Ophelia hates slavery, but she considers it almost _23__ for blacks, against whom she harbors a deep-seated prejudice. And she doesn’t want them to touch her. Stowe stresses that much of Ophelia’s prejudice _24__ from unfamiliarity and ignorance rather than from actual _25__ Because Ophelia has seldom spent time along with __26_, she finds them uncomfortably alien (不相容) to her.

But Ophelia seems to be one of the only characters in the novel whose character _27__ as the story progresses. Once St. Clare puts Topsy in her care, Ophelia is forced to be in _28__ with a slave. At first she begins to teach Topsy __29_ out of duty. But Stowe suggests that duty alone will not root out slavery and that those against slavery must act out of love. Eva’s death leads to  Ophelia’s change, and she comes to love Topsy as an actual human being and not just a slave. She   _30__ her racial prejudice and offers herself as a model to Stowe’s Northern readers.

21. A. reflects  B. supposes     C. suspects      D. provides

22. A. various  B. arbitrary      C. racial   D. awful

23. A. impossible     B. necessary    C. unfair   D. important

24. A. suffers              B. differs  C. releases       D. results

25. A. practice       B. performance        C. experience  D. application

26. A. slaves    B. readers        C. Stowe  D. characters

27. A. increases       B. disappears  C. refreshes     D. develops

28. A. trouble  B. danger          C. contact         D. comparison

29. A. hardly    B. merely C. specially       D. properly

30. A. hides      B. overcomes  C. reserves       D. prohibits