首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Letty the old lady lived in a "Single Room Occupancy" hotel approved by the New York City welfare department and occupied by old
Letty the old lady lived in a "Single Room Occupancy" hotel approved by the New York City welfare department and occupied by old
admin
2015-10-21
61
问题
Letty the old lady lived in a "Single Room Occupancy" hotel approved by the New York City welfare department and occupied by old losers, junkies, cockroaches and rats. Whenever she left her room—a tiny cubicle with a cot, a chair, a seven-year-old calendar and a window so filthy it blended with the unspeakable walls—she would pack all her valuables in two large shopping bags and carry them with her. If she didn’t, everything would disappear when she left the hotel. Her "things"were also a burden. Everything she managed to possess was portable and had multiple uses. A shawl is more versatile than a sweater, and hats are no good at all, although she used to have lots of nice hats, she told me.
The first day I saw Letty I had left my apartment in search of a "bag lady". I had seen these women round the city frequently, had spoken to a few. Sitting around the parks had taught me more about these city vagabonds. As a group, few were eligible for social security. They had always been flotsam and jetsam, floating from place to place and from job to job—waitress, short order cook, sales clerk, stock boy, maid, mechanic, porter—all those jobs held by faceless people. The "bag ladies"were a special breed. They looked and acted and dressed strangely in some of the most determinedly conformist areas of the city. They frequented Fourteen Street downtown, and the fancy shopping districts. They seemed to like crowds but remained alone. They held long conversations with themselves, with telephone poles, with unexpected cracks in the sidewalk. They hung around lunch counters and cafeterias, and could remain impervious to the rudeness of a determined waitress and sit for hours clutching a coffee cup full of cold memories.
Letty was my representative bag lady. I picked her up on the corner of Fourteenth and Third Avenue. She had the most suspicious face I had encountered; her entire body, in fact, was pulled forward in one large question mark. She was carrying a double plain brown shopping bag and a larger white bag ordering you to vote for some obscure man for some obscure office and we began talking about whether or not she was an unpaid advertisement. I asked her if she would have lunch with me, and let me treat, as a matter of fact. After some hesitation and a few sharp glances over the top of her glasses, Letty the Bag Lady let me come into her life. We had lunch that day, the next, and later the next week.
Being a bag lady was a full-time job. Take the problem of the hotels. You can’t stay to long in any one of those welfare hotels, Letty told me, because the junkies figure out your routine, and when you get your checks, and you’ll be robbed, even killed. So you have to move a lot. And every time you move, you have to make three trips to the welfare office to get them to approve the new place, even if it’s just another cockroach-filled, rat-infested hole in the wall. During the last five years, Letty tried to move every two or three months.
Most of our conversations took place standing in line. New York State had just changed the regulations governing Medicaid cards and Letty had to get a new card. That took two hours in line, one hour sitting in a large dank-smelling room, and two minutes with a social worker who never once looked up. Another time, her case worker at the welfare office sent Letty to try and get food stamps, and after standing in line for three hours she found out she didn’t qualify because she didn’t have cooking facilities in her room. "This is my social life,"she said. "I run around the city and stand in line. You stand in line to see one of them fancy movies and calling it art; I stand in line for medicine, for food, for glasses, for the cards to get pills, for the pills; I stand in line to see people who never see who I am; at the hotel, sometimes I even have to stand in line to go to the John. When I die there’ll probably be a line to get through the gate, and when I get up to the front of the line, somebody will push it closed and say, ’ Sorry. Come back after lunch. ’ These agencies, I figure they have to make it as hard for you to get help as they can, so only really strong people or really stubborn people like me can survive. "
Letty would talk and talk; sometimes, she didn’t seem to know I was even there. She never remembered my name, and would give a little start of surprise whenever I said hers, as if it had been a long time since anyone had said "Letty. "I don’t think she thought of herself as a person, anymore; I think she had accepted the view that she was a welfare case, a Mediaid card, a nuisance in the bus depot in the winter time, a victim to any petty criminal, existing on about the same level as cockroaches.
What is the author’s attitude towards Letty?
选项
A、Doubtful.
B、Detached.
C、Sympathetic.
D、Appreciative.
答案
C
解析
态度题。根据文章最后一段“She…would give a little start of surprise whenever I said hers,as if ithad been a long time since anyone had said‘Letty.’I don’t think she thought of herself as a person.anymore…”可以推知,作者对Letty的遭遇是关切和同情的,故答案为[C]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/fGKO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
ThefollowinglanguagesbelongtoIndo-EuropeanLanguageFamilyEXCEPT______.
Morepeopledieoftuberculosis(结核病)thanofanyotherdiseasecausedbyasingleagent.Thishasprobablybeenthecaseinquit
AccordingtotheWTO,Chineseexportsrose______year.
A、Happinessmeansgoodluckinmanylanguages.B、Happinessasakindoffeelingissomethinglikehavingagoodlife.C、People’s
Unlikeanyothercreatureonthisplanet,humanscanlearnandunderstand,withouthavingexperienced.Theycanthinkthemselve
Unlikeanyothercreatureonthisplanet,humanscanlearnandunderstand,withouthavingexperienced.Theycanthinkthemselve
Unlikeanyothercreatureonthisplanet,humanscanlearnandunderstand,withouthavingexperienced.Theycanthinkthemselve
______isoftenusedtorefertotheUSDepartmentofDefense.
Itisatruthuniversallyacknowledged,thatasinglemaninpossessionofagoodfortune,mustbeinwantofawife.Howev
随机试题
骨髓移植的主要作用是
期间费用是指企业一定时期内发生的不能计入产品成本,而直接计入各期损益的各项费用,主要包括()。
________是在费用预算阶段完成的,反映的是按时间变化的预算状况,用于测量和监控项目费用的执行情况。
衡量学校体育目标完成的最终标准是()。
根据韦克斯勒智力量表,假定某个年龄组的平均智商分数为85分,标准差为15。甲某经测验得100分,那么甲某的智商是()。
有一种高效降血脂药物目前只能从一种叫“菠苴”树的树皮中提取。这种树在我国非常稀少,而制取一公斤药物需要剥取1000株“菠苴”树的树皮。因此,这种药物在我国的大批量持续生产,将不可避免地导致“菠苴”树种在我国的灭绝。以下哪项如果为真,最能削弱上述结论?(
藏羚羊属于国家一级保护野生动物,被列为国际《濒危野生动植物种国际贸易公约》附录I物种,主要分布在新疆、青海、西藏的高原地区,另有零星个体分布在克什米尔地区。历史上藏羚羊的数量曾经达到百万只之多,20世纪最后20年,以藏羚羊绒为原料的世界上最昂贵的披肩莎图什
简述企业投资的种类。
以下不属于单选按钮的属性是()。
EverytimeIdosomething,healways(point)______outmyfaults.
最新回复
(
0
)