An Integrated English Course

Book 4 Unit 14 An Integrated English Course

Learning Objectives By the end of this unit, you are supposed to • be aware of the author’s purpose of writing • grasp the main structure through an intensive reading • be able to paraphrase all the difficult sentences • master all the new words and sentence structures and employ them in conversation and writing. • have a good understanding of the style of the text—argumentation, most of which consists of three parts: the thesis of the author, the evidences to support the thesis, and the summary or conclusion of the argument.

Teaching Procedures Pre-reading Questions Text I. The Idiocy of Urban Life ● Passage ● Structure analysis ● Main idea of the passage ● Language points ● sentence studies ● vocabulary studies Text II. The City

1) What are the major differences between city life and country life? 2) Where do you prefer to live, in the city or in the country? Please give evidences to support your choice. Pre-reading questions

Text I: The Idiocy of Urban Life

The Idiocy of Urban Life Between about 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. the life of the city is civil. Occasionally the lone footsteps of someone walking to or from work echo along the sidewalk. All work that has to be done at those hours is useful — in bakeries, for example. Even the newspaper presses stop turning forests into lies. Now and then a car comes out of the silence and cruises easily through the blinking traffic lights. The natural inhabitants of the city come out from damp basements and cellars. With their pink ears and paws, sleek, well-groomed, their whiskers combed, rats are true city dwellers. Urban life, during the hours when they reign, is urbane. These rats are social creatures, as you can tell if you look out on the city street during an insomniac night. But after 6 a.m., the two-legged, daytime creatures of the city begin to stir; and it is they, not the rats, who bring the rat race. You might think that human beings congregate in large cities because they are gregarious. The opposite is true. Urban life today is aggressively individualistic and atomized. Cities are not social places. The lunacy of modern city life lies first in the fact that most city dwellers try to live outside the city boundaries. So the two-legged creatures have created suburbs, exurbs, and finally rururbs (rubs to some). Disdaining rural life, they try to create simulations of it. No effort is spared to let city

dwellers imagine they are living anywhere but in a city: patches of grass in the more modest suburbs, broader spreads in the richer ones further out; prim new trees planted along the streets; at the foot of the larger backyards, a pretense to bosky woodlands. The professional people buy second homes in the country as soon as they can afford them, and as early as possible on Friday head out of the city they have created. The New York intellectuals and artists quaintly say they are “going to the country” for the weekend or the summer, but in fact they have created a little Manhattan-by-the-Sea around the Hamptons, spreading over the Long Island potato fields whose earlier solitude was presumably the reason why they first went there. City dwellers take the city with them to the country, for they will not live without its pamperings. The main streets of America’s small towns, which used to have hardware and dry goods stores, are now strips of boutiques. Old-fashioned barbers become unisex hairdressing salons. The brown rats stay in the cities because of the filth the humans leave during the day. The rats clean it up at night. Soon the countryside will be just as nourishing to them, as the city dwellers take their filth with them.

Work still gives meaning to rural life, the family, and churches. But in the city today work and home, family and church, are separated. What the office workers do for a living is not part of their home life. At the same time they maintain the pointless frenzy of their work hours in their hours off. They rush from the office to jog, to the gym or the YMCA pool, to work at their play with the same joylessness. Even though the offices of today’s businesses in the city are themselves moving out to the suburbs, this does not necessarily bring the workers back closer to their workplace. It merely means that to the rush-hour traffic into the city there is now added a rush-hour traffic out to the suburbs in the morning, and back around and across the city in the evening. As the farmer walks down to his farm in the morning, the city dweller is dressing for the first idiocy of his day, which he not only accepts but even seeks — the journey to work. In the modern office building in the city there are windows that don’t open. This is perhaps the most symbolic lunacy of all. Outdoors is something you can look at through glass but not to touch or hear. These windows are a scandal because they endanger the lives of office workers in case of fire. But no less grievous, even onthe fairest spring

or fall day the workers cannot put their heads outside. Thus it is not surprising that the urban worker has no knowledge of the seasons. He is aware simply that in some months there is air conditioning, and in others through the same vents come fetid central heating. Even outside at home in their suburbs the city dwellers may know that sometimes it’s hot, and sometimes it’s cold, but no true sense of the rhythms of the seasons is to be had from a lawn in the backyard and a few spindly trees struggling to survive. The city dweller reels from unreality to unreality through each day, always trying to recover the rural life that has been surrendered for the city lights. No city dweller, even in the suburbs, knows the wonder of a pitch-dark country lane at night. Nor does he naturally get any exercise from his work. Every European points out that Americans are the most round-shouldered people in the world. Few of them carry themselves with an upright stance, although a correct stance is the first precondition of letting your lungs breathe naturally and deeply. Electric typewriters cut

down the amount of physical exertion needed to hit the keys; the buttons of a word processor need even less effort, as you can tell from the posture of those who use them. They rush out to jog or otherwise Fonda-ize their leisure to try to repair the damage done during the day. Everything in urban life is an effort either to simulate rural life or to compensate for its loss by artificial means. It is from this day-to-day existence of unreality, pretence, and idiocy that the city people, slumping along their streets even when scurrying, never looking up at their buildings, far less the sky, have the insolence to disdain and mock the useful and rewarding life of the country people who support them. Now go out and carry home a Douglas fir, call it a Christmas tree, and enjoy 12 days of contact with nature. Of course city dwellers don’t know it once had roots.

Structure Analysis The passage can be divided into three parts. Part One: (Paragraphs 1- 2) • contrasts human beings with rats in terms of their urban lives. It starts with a description of a civil urban life at night, when rats are active in the city. Then it is contrasted with the urban life of human beings. Finally the writer presents the thesis of his argument: aggressively individualistic and atomized urban life today goes against both the purpose of the city and the human nature, and thus is foolish.

Part Two: (Paragraphs 3-9) • provides evidences for the idiocy of urban life. • Para.3-4: discuss the pretense of city dwellers when they try to live outside the city boundaries. • Para. 5-6: put forward the point that city work is much less meaningful than farming. • Para. 7: proves that the city dwellers live and work in an unreal environment. • Para. 8-9: show the damage done by the office work to the physical conditions of the workers.

Part Three: (Para. 10) • summarizes the idiocy of urban life and the ultimate reasons for this phenomenon. On the one hand, city dwellers try to simulate rural life, and on the other hand, they disdain and mock this life.

Main Idea of the passage This text falls in the generic category of argumentation. The author first presents to us that aggressively individualistic and atomized urban life today goes against both the purpose of the city and the human nature, and thus is foolish. Then he provides evidences for the idiocy of urban life. Finally, the author reiterates his point.

LANGUAGE POINTS • civil • polite and formal E.g. His manner was civil, though not particularly friendly. • cruises easily through blinking traffic lights • moves easily through traffic lights and turn red and green alternately • cruise: (of a vehicle or its driver) travel (at an efficient speed) E.g. The plane is cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet. Back to the Text

during an insomniac night • during a sleepless night • The word “insomniac” here is used as a transferred epithet to modify something inanimate. • rat race • fierce competition Back to the Text

rubs to some • rubs as called by some people • disdain • think oneself superior to; reject E.g. The older musicians disdain the new, rock-influenced music. Back to the Text

simulation • imitation of the conditions of (a situation etc.); resemblance E.g. I was quite deceived by her simulation of sorrow. • simulate: imitate; give the appearance of E.g. In cheap furniture, plastic is often used to simulate wood. • in the richer ones further out • in the richer suburbs farther away from the city boundary Back to the Text Back to the Text

prim new trees • neatly pruned new trees • prim: 1) neat E.g. a prim garden • 2) very formal and correct in behavior and easily shocked by anything rude E.g. She is much too prim and proper to go into a pub. • frenzy • uncontrolled and excited behavior or emotion, which is sometimes violent E.g. A gunman killed ten people in a murderous frenzy today in that city. Back to the Text Back to the Text

…to the rush-hour traffic into the city there is now added a rush-hour traffic out to the suburbs in the morning… • This is a partly inverted sentence, whose normal order is: there is now a rush-hour traffic out to the suburbs in the morning added to the rush-hour traffic into the city. • scandal • 1) something that causes a public feeling of outrage or indignation E.g. The minister was forced to resign after a scandal involving him and another minister’s wife. • 2) malicious gossip E.g. Someone must have been spreading scandal. Back to the Text

reel • move from side to side unsteadily E.g. At closing time he reeled out of the pub and across the road. • the rural life that has been surrendered for the city lights • the rural life that has given way to the city lights Back to the Text

slumping along their streets • walking with stooping head and shoulders along their streets • scurry • run or move hurriedly, especially with short quick steps E.g. We all scurried for shelter when the storm began. Back to the Text

far less the sky • looking at the sky far less than they did their buildings Back to the Text

Comprehension questions • Decide which of the following best states the author’s purpose of writing. • To expound why most city dwellers try to live in suburbs, exurbs or rururbs. • To prove the daily existence of unreality, pretence and foolishness of urban life. • To argue that urban workers are submerged in an unreal environment.

Urban life, during the hours when they reign, is urbane. Rats make city life orderly and courteous when they dominate the city deep at night. • City dwellers take the city with them to the country, for they will not live without its pamperings. City dwellers create all kinds of city vogues in the country, for they will not live without these fashionable things. • These windows are a scandal because they endanger the livesof office workers in case of fire. These windows are disgraceful because they put the lives of office workers in danger if a fire should occur. • …no true sense of the rhythms of the seasons is to be had from a lawn in the backyard and a few spindly tress struggling to survive. …a lawn in the backyard and a few spindle-shaped trees struggling for life are not enough to give the dweller and true sense of the season changes.

TEXT II: The City John V. Lindsay I don’t pretend to be a scholar on the history of the city in American life. But my thirteen years in public office, first as an officer of the U.S. Department of Justice, then as Congressman, and now as Mayor of the biggest city in America, have taught me all too well the fact that a strong anti-urban attitude runs consistently through the mainstream of American thinking. Much of the drive behind the settlement of America was in reaction to the conditions in European industrial centers — and much of the theory supporting the basis of freedom in America was linked directly to the availability of land and the perfectibility of man outside the corrupt influences of the city. What has this to do with the predicament of the modern city? I think it has much to do with it. For the fact that the United States, particularly the federal government, which has historically established our national priorities, has simply never thought that the American city was “worthy” of improvement — at least not to the extent of expending any basic resources on it. .

Antipathy to the city predates the American experience. When industrialization drove the European working man into the major cities of the continent, books and pamphlets appeared attacking the city as a source of crime, corruption, filth, disease, vice, licentiousness, subversion, and high prices. The theme of some of the earliest English novels — Moll Flandersfor example — is that of the innocent country youth coming to the big city and being subjected to all forms of horror until justice — and a return to the pastoral life — follow. The proper opinion of Europe seemed to support the Frenchman who wrote: “In the country, a man’s mind is free and easy ... ; but in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintances, one’s own and other people’s business, foolish quarrels, ceremonies, visits, impertinent discourses, and a thousand other fopperies and diversions steal away the greatest part of our time and leave no leisure for better and necessary employment. Great towns are but a larger sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds or pounds to beasts.”

This was not, of course, the only opinion on city life. Others maintained that the city “was the fireplace of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the cold dark world.” And William Penn planned Philadelphia as the “holy city,” carefully laid out so that each house would have the appearance of a country cottage to avoid the density and overcrowding that so characterized European cities. Without question, however, the first major thinker to express a clear antipathy to the urban way of life was Thomas Jefferson. For Jefferson, the political despotism of Europe and the economic despotism of great concentrations of wealth, on the one hand, and poverty on the other, were symbolized by the cities of London and Paris, which he visited frequently during his years as a diplomatic representative of the new nation. In the new world, with its opportunities for widespread landholding, there was the chance for a flowering of authentic freedom, with each citizen, freed from economic dependence, both able and eager to participate in charting the course of his own future. America, in a real sense, was an escape from all the injustice that had flourished in Europe — injustice that was characterized by the big city.

This Jeffersonian theme was to remain an integral part of the American tradition. Throughout the nineteenth century, as the explorations of America pushed farther outward, the new settlers sounded most like each other in their common celebration of freedom from city chains. The point is that all this opinion goes beyond ill feelings; it suggests a strong national sense that encouragement and development of the city was to be in no sense a national priority — that our manifest destiny lay in the untouched lands to the west, in consistent movement westward, and in maximum dispersion of land to as many people as possible. This belief accelerated after the Civil War, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the first waves of immigration were being felt around the country as immigrants arrived in urban areas. Thepoverty of the immigrants, largely from Ireland and Northern Europe, caused many people in rural America to equate poverty with personal inferiority — a point of view that has not yet disappeared from our national thinking. Attacks on the un-American and criminal tendencies of the Irish, the Slavs, and every other ethnic group that arrived on America’s shore were a steady part of national thinking, as were persistent efforts to bar any further migration of “undesirables” to our country.

With the coming of rapid industrialization, all the results of investigations into city poverty and despair that we think of as recent findings were being reported — and each report served to confirm the beliefs of the Founding Fathers that the city was no place for a respectable American. Is all this relevant only to past attitudes and past legislative history? I don’t think so. The fact is that until today, this same basic belief — that our cities ought to be left to fend for themselves — is still a powerful element in our national tradition. Consider more modern history. The most important housing act in the last twenty-five years was not the law that provided for public housing; it was the law that permitted the FHA to grant subsidized low-interest mortgages to Americans who want to purchase homes. More than anything else, this has made the suburban dream a reality. It has brought the vision of grass and trees and a place for the kids to play within the reach of millions of working Americans, and the consequences be damned. The impact of such legislation on the cities was not even considered — nor wasthe concept of making subsidized money with the

suburbs. Instead, in little more than a decade 800,000 middle income New Yorkers fled the city for the suburbs and were replaced by largely unskilled workers who in many instances represented a further cost rather than an economic asset. And it was not a hundred years ago but two years ago that a suggested law giving a small amount of federal money for rat control was literally laughed off the floor of the House of Representatives amid much joking about discrimination against country rats in favor of city rats. What happened, I think, was not the direct result of “the city is evil and therefore we will not help it” concept. It was more indirect, more subtle, the result of the kind of thinking that enabled us to spend billions of dollars in subsidies to preserve the family farm while doing nothing about an effective program for jobs in the city; to create government agencies concerned with the interests of agriculture, veterans, small business, labor, commerce, and the American Indian but to create no Department of Urban Development until 1965. In other words, the world of urban America as a dark and desolate place undeserving of support or help has become fixed in the American consciousness. And we are paying for that attitude in our cities today.

Comprehension questions • Why has there been a strong anti-urban attitude in the mainstream of American thinking? • To whom can this thinking be traced back? Why? • What is the author’s attitude towards the antipathy to the city?

Main Idea In the mainstream of American thinking, there has been a strong anti-urban attitude. It is consistently believed that the city is characterized by injustice and it is a place full of corruption, filth, disease, vice, licentiousness, subversion and high prices. By contrast, the country is considered free and natural. This thinking can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson, who was the first major thinker to express a clear antipathy to city life. However all this is relevant not only to past attitudes and legislative history, but also to the modern history. Throughout the text, the author expressed his dissatisfaction with the current condition of the urban life in America and unhappy with the strong anti-urban attitude that has exited in the mainstream of American thinking for 200 years, especially in the last sentence of the text: “And we are paying for that attitude in our cities today.”

Notes to text II • About the text: this text is taken from The City published by W. W. Norton and Company in 1969. • About the author: John V. Lindsay was born in 1921 and died of illness in 2000. He belonged to the Republican Party and served as the 103rd mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973. • Much of the drive behind the settlement of America …outside the corrupt influences of the city (Paragraph 1): The major reason why people came to settle in America is that they did not like the living conditions in European cities and they wanted to get more land and live a better life without the negative influences of the city. • Antipathy to the city predates the American experience. (Paragraph 3): the hatred of the city existed before the settlement of American began. • Moll Flanders (Paragraph 3): Moll Flanders, or to give it its full title, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, was written by Daniel Defoe in the form of a fictional autobiography of the girl known as Moll and it was published in 1722.

William Penn (Paragraph 5): William Penn (1644－1718) has been regarded as the first hero of liberty for his pursuit of religious tolerance and interracial peacemaking. He is known as the founder of Pennsylvania. • Thomas Jefferson (Paragraph 6): Thomas Jefferson (1743－1826) served as American president from 1801 to 1809. • The point is that all this goes beyond ill feelings … (Paragraph 8): The point is that no one disliked this opinion … • the Civil War (Paragraph 9):the war between the Union and the Confederate, which broke out in 1861 and ended in 1865 • The Founding Fathers (Paragraph 10):founders of the United States such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams • FHA (Paragraph 12):Federal Housing Administration

An Integrated English Course