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.

1. How do Twain’s novels on slavery differ from Stowe’s?

A．Twain was more willing to deal with racism.

B．Twain’s attack on racism was much less open.

C．Twain’s themes seemed to agree with plots.

D．Twain was openly concerned with racism.

2.Recent criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arose partly from its ______.

A．target readers at the bottom

B．anti-slavery attitude

C．rather impolite language

D．frequent use of “nigger”

3.What best proves Twain’s anti-slavery stand according to the author?

A．Jim’s search for his family was described in detail.

B．The slave’s voice was first heard in American novels.

C．Jim grew up into a man and a father in the white culture.

D．Twain suspected that the slaves were less intelligent.

4.The story of two babies switched mainly indicates that ______.

A．slaves were forced to give up their babies to their masters

B．slaves’ babies could pick up slave-holders’ way of speaking

C．blacks’ social position was shaped by how they were brought up

D．blacks were born with certain features of prejudice

5.What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 7 refer to?

A．The attacks.                            B．Slavery and prejudice.

C．White men.                            D．The shows.

6.What does the author mainly argue for?

A．Twain had done more than his contemporary writers to attack racism.

B．Twain was an admirable figure comparable to Abraham Lincoln.

C．Twain’s works had been banned on unreasonable grounds.

D．Twain’s works should be read from a historical point of view.

高中生在成长的过程中会碰到一些烦恼。就这一话题你班正积极筹备召开一次主题班会。请你依据下表进行必要的思考，并用英语准备一篇发言稿。

第II卷（共两部分 满分35分）

第一部分：短文填词（共10小题；每小题1分，共10分）

阅读下面短文，根据以下提示：1）汉语提示，2）首字母提示3）语境提示，在每个空格内填入一个适当的英语单词，并将该词完整地写在右边相对应的横线上。所填单词要求意义准确，拼写正确。

 It is vital for us to have a good mood in our daily life.

If you o    a good mood, you will find everything is wonderful   76.         

in the world. Most      (重要), you will have an optimistic effect   77.          

        the people around you. We all will live a harmonious and   78.         

happy life. It is also good for your h      . However，sometimes   79.            

when you meet some      (困难)，when you quarrel with others   80.         

or when you         (无法)in doing something, you may  have   81.         

a bad mood. If so, you should get        of it as fast as possible.   82.         

As we all know, e           has its two sides. So you should think more    83.           

about         bright side. We are sure that everything will be all right with    84.           

time  p       by. Remember: Only you can make yourself happy.   85.         

    I hope that everyone has a good mood every day！

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根据下列句子及所给单词的首字母，写出各单词的完全形式（每空限填一词）。
【小题1】Of the twelve m____________ in the year, January comes first.
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