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精读,中英文对照 希望共同探讨

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1,Economy
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
Why should they eat their sixty acres
这里的THEY是指谁?是有钱人,肉食者吗?还是说那些继承了大片土地,但是日子也好不到哪里去的人?但如果是后者,作者也没有觉得他们的日子好到哪里去。
They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can.
字面意思不难理解,但是跟上下文的意思似乎不连贯。


1楼2021-04-10 15:09回复