PART I
The interpretation of fiction
1.1 Lead in:
a) You are going to read a story about the display of philanthropic ideas (the ideas of charity). Look at the title of the story and say what can be meant by the words “another case”.
b) The following words\phrases appear in the story. Match them and their definitions: 1.flimsy
a)Well-behaved and easy to control
2.a marvelous change
b)made of a thin or light substance
3.the metamorphosis
c)extremely impressive
4.phony graft
d)a change that makes sb\sth very different
5. to discern
e)tricking all the rest
6.docilely
f)to see, notice or understand sth.
C) In what context do you think the words above can be used.
1.2. Read the story and check your understanding
Another Case of Ingratitude by John Reed Walking late down Fifth Avenue, I saw him ahead of me, on the dim stretch of sidewalk between two arc-lights. It was biting cold. Head sunk between hunched-up shoulders, hands in his pockets, he shuffled along, never lifting his feet from the ground. Even as I watched him, he turned, as if in a daze, and leaned against the wall of a building, where he made an angle out of the wind. At first I thought it was shelter he sought, but as I drew nearer I discerned the unnatural stiffness of his legs, the way his cheek pressed against the cold stone, and the glimmer of light that played on his sunken, closed eyes. The man was asleep!
Asleep—the bitter wind searching his flimsy clothes and the holes in his shapeless shoes; upright against the hard wall, with his legs rigid as an epileptic's. There was something bestial in such gluttony of sleep.
I shook him by the shoulder. He slowly opened an eye, cringing as though he were often disturbed by rougher hands than mine, and gazed at me with hardly a trace of intelligence.
"What's the matter—sick?" I asked.
Faintly and dully he mumbles something, and at the same time stepped out as if to move away. I asked him what he