Americans love work. It is meat and drink to them. In recent years they have learned how to play, but they make work of that too. If it’s skiing, they throw themselves at it with an effort that would kill a horse. If it’s a vacation, they travel at sixty miles an hour, pause only long enough to snap pictures, and then discover what it was they went to see when they get home and look at the photographs.
Americans like to be handy at all things. Nearly everyone knows how to use tools, make simple repairs to plumbing or electrical fixtures, refinish furniture or paint a wall. Far from being thought a disgrace if he performs these "unskilled" tasks, a man is thought ridiculous if he does not know how to perform them.
Along with this urge to be jack-of-all-trades goes a willingness to change from one occupation to another. It surprises no one in America when the banker’s son becomes a farmer or vice versa. Or when a college professor shifts into industry, or a young man who starts out with a truck purchased on credit ends up running an enterprise with fleets of trucks spanning several states.
What is an American?
"I can’t make you out," Henry James has Mrs. Tristram say to the American, "whether you are very simple or very deep." This is a dilemma, which has often confronted Europeans. Usually they conclude that Americans are childish. But one cannot accurately call one society mature, another immature. Each has its own logic.
What is it then that makes Americans recognizable wherever they go? Free from the social restraints which would make them act very differently at home, they are bent on making the most of this freedom. Americans carry with them an appearance, which is more a result of attitude than of clothing. This attitude combines a lack of class consciousness, a somewhat cheerful optimism and an inquisitiveness(好打听别人的事情) which look to the European like naivety. Also a liking for facts and figures, and above all a desire to be friendly.
To sum up, American characteristics are the product of response to an unusually competitive situation combined with unusual opportunity.
Americans are a peculiar people. They work like mad, then give away much of what they earn. They play until they are exhausted, and call this a vacation. They love to think of themselves as tough-minded businessmen, yet they are pushovers(易于征服的人) for any hard luck story. They have the biggest of nearly everything including government, motorcars and debts, yet they are afraid of bigness. They also have the most traffic deaths, the most waste, the most racketeering(敲诈勒索).
There is, of course, no typical American. But if you added them all together and then divided by 226,000,000 they would look something like what this essay has tried to portray.
Questions:
1. Unlike the English, Turkish, or Chinese, Americans don’t have a uniform pattern of character.
2. Americans attach great importance to success though they don’t equate success with materials rewards.
3. Generally speaking, Americans don’t think there is anything wrong with personal material success.
4. Americans like skiing better than any other physical activity.
5. People in different societies have different patterns of character. There is no way to decide which society is superior.
6. Americans attribute the forming of their characteristics to the influence of different cultures.
7. From the passage, we can come to a conclusion that there is little or no glory attached to being born wealthy or privileged in the United States
8. Americans spend _____________on entertainment than people elsewhere in the world.
9. It is _______________that makes Americans recognizable wherever they go.
10. Besides naïve, Europeans use another word to describe Americans. The word is "___________". |
