2. 外语
  3. "During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heav

"During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heav

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问题      "During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher." Thus Edgar Allan Poe opened his story of "The Fall of the House of Usher" in 1839. In this beautifully crafted sentence he captured so much that is essential to the horror story: darkness, ominous solitude, foreboding calm, apprehension and uncertainty, and a deep feeling of melancholy that could soon turn to fear.
     Many kinds of fiction are self-explanatory: mysteries, Westerns, love stories, spy thrillers, and science fiction define themselves by the terms used to name them. The horror story is less easily defined, perhaps because other types of fiction so often use the trappings of terror to enhance their plots. Charles Dickens used the vehicle of an old-fashioned ghost story to tell "A Christmas Carol", but that book is not a horror story. Nor does a Grimm brothers fairy tale such as "Hansel and Gretel," with its child devouring witch, belong to the genre.
    The nature of the horror story is best indicated by the title of the 1980s television series Tales from the Dark side. Human beings have always acknowledged that there is evil in the world and a dark side to human nature that cannot be explained except perhaps in religious terms. This evil may be imagined as having an almost unlimited power to inspire anxiety, fear, dread, and terror in addition to doing actual physical and mental harm.
    In the tale of horror quite ordinary people are confronted by something unknown and fearful, which can be neither understood nor explained in reasonable terms. It is the emphasis on the unreasonable that lies at the heart of horror stories.
    This kind of literature arose in the 18th century at the start of a movement called Romanticism. The movement was a reaction against a rational, orderly world in which humanity was basically good and everything could be explained scientifically. The literary type that inspired the horror story is Gothic fiction, tales of evil, often set in sinister medieval surroundings. This original kind of horror fiction has persisted to the present.
What is considered to be the most important ingredient that makes a horror story?
选项 A、Irrationality.
B、Melancholy.
C、Uncertainty.
D、Suspension.
答案A
解析 irrationality 意为“不合理”，“超乎寻常”。第四段指出，在恐怖小说中，普通人面临未知和恐怖情景，这种情景超出了人们的理解力，无法用理性解释，正是这种对非理性的强调构成了恐怖小说的核心内容。melancholy 表示“忧郁；悲哀”的意思；uncertainty 意为“不确定，拿不准”：suspension 意为“悬挂：悬浮”。都不符合题意。
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