On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution: the king must be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn’t ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a halt and said:
“Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your soldierly stride, your lordly port—these will not do. You stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this.”
The king took careful note, and then tried an imitation.
“Pretty fair—pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please—there, very good. Eyes too high; pray don’t look at the horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in front of you. Ah—that is better, that is very good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much decision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please—this is what I mean.... Now you are getting it; that is the idea—at least, it sort of approaches it.... Yes, that is pretty fair. But! There is a great big something wanting, I don’t quite know what it is. Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspective on the thing.... Now, then—your head’s right, speed’s right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general style right—everything’s right! And yet the fact remains, the aggregate’s wrong. The account don’t balance. Do it again, please.... Now I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I’ve struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that’s what’s the trouble. It’s all amateur—mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except that it don’t delude.”
“What, then, must one do, to prevail?”
“Let me think... I can’t seem to quite get at it. In fact, there isn’t anything that can right the matter but practice. This is a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your stately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one field and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could see us from there. It will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling you, sire.”
After the drill had gone on a little while, I said:
“Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are before us. Proceed, please—accost the head of the house.”
The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, with frozen austerity:
“Varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have.”
“Ah, your grace, that is not well done.”
“In what lacketh it?”
“These people do not call each other varlets.”
“Nay, is that true?”
“Yes; only those above them call them so.”
“Then must I try again. I will call him villein.”
“No-no; for he may be a freeman.”
“Ah—so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman.”
“That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother.”
“Brother!—to dirt like that?”
“Ah, but we are pretending to be dirt like that, too.”
“It is even true. I will say it. Brother, bring a seat, and thereto what cheer ye have, withal. Now ‘tis right.”
“Not quite, not wholly right. You have asked for one, not us —for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one.”
The king looked puzzled—he wasn’t a very heavy weight, intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.
“Would you have a seat also—and sit?”
“If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals—and playing the deception pretty poorly, too.”
“It is well and truly said! How wonderful is truth, come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may! Yes, he must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin with more show of respect to the one than to the other.”
“And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. He must bring nothing outside; we will go in—in among the dirt, and possibly other repulsive things,—and take the food with the household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there will be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Please walk again, my liege. There—it is better—it is the best yet; but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop.”
“Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.... Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing. Strap it upon my back.”
He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on, I prompting and correcting:
“Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors; you are out of work—which is horse-shoeing, let us say—and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are crying because they are hungry—”
And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words—they meant nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about “the working classes,” and satisfy themselves that a day’s hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day’s hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven’t tried the other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn’t money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down—and I will be satisfied, too.
Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him—why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also. And it’s also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.
背景介绍和作者介绍
这段文字选自马克·吐温的经典小说《王子与贫儿》，该小说于1881年首次出版。 吐温是美国最伟大的作家和幽默大师之一，他用这个故事探讨了社会不平等、身份认同和同情心等主题。 这部小说讲述了两个男孩的故事——一个是王子，另一个是贫穷的乞丐——他们互换身份，体验彼此截然不同的人生。 吐温敏锐的智慧和敏锐的社会观察使这本书成为对阶级差别和不公正的有力批判。
详细解读和意义
在这段摘录中，叙述者正在指导王子如何令人信服地模仿贫穷平民的姿势和举止。 王子天生的王者风范出卖了他，所以他必须学会像一个饱受苦难和贫困折磨的人一样走路和行事。 这种训练不仅仅是关于外表，更是关于体现贫困所带来的痛苦和谦卑的精神。
这一幕突出了在没有亲身经历的情况下真正理解他人的经历是多么困难。 叙述者强调，仅仅靠言语无法传达苦难的现实； 只有亲身经历才能做到。 这是一个关于同情心和肤浅理解的局限性的深刻教训。
此外，这段话还批判了社会角色和阶级差别的虚伪性。 王子必须学会表现得垂头丧气才能被普通人接受，这表明社会的评判是基于外在的表现和受社会地位影响的行为。
给学生的教训和见解
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通过经验获得同情心： 故事告诉我们，真正的同情心不仅仅是想象别人的处境； 它需要付出巨大的努力去理解他们的感受和挣扎。 学生可以通过仔细倾听并尝试从他人的角度看世界来学习变得更有同情心。
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谦卑的力量： 王子试图谦卑自己的行为表明了谦卑在社会交往中的重要性。 认识到自己的特权和局限性可以培养对他人的尊重和友善。
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对社会角色的批判性思考： 这部小说鼓励读者质疑社会结构和刻板印象。 学生可以反思外表和社会标签如何影响我们对待他人的方式，以及他们如何挑战不公平的判断。
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实践和毅力的价值： 王子反复努力掌握乞丐的举止，这说明学习新技能——无论是社交、情感还是智力——都需要耐心和毅力。
在日常生活中应用
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在学校： 学生可以通过支持可能正在挣扎或感到被排斥的同学来运用同情心。 了解不同的背景可以改善团队合作和友谊。
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在社交场合： 练习谦卑和友善有助于建立更牢固的关系。 在不带偏见的情况下意识到社会差异可以促进包容性。
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在个人成长中： 像王子一样接受挑战和练习新行为可以帮助学生培养韧性和适应能力。
从故事中培养积极的品质
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同情心： 鼓励学生阅读不同的故事并参与角色扮演活动，以更好地理解他人的经历。
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谦卑： 传授认识自己优缺点以及尊重他人的价值，无论他们的地位如何。
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毅力： 强调实践和从错误中学习的重要性，就像王子在训练适应新的社会角色时所做的那样。
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批判性意识： 促进关于公平、社会正义和刻板印象影响的讨论，以培养有思想和具有社会意识的个人。
通过探索《王子与贫儿》，学生们不仅可以欣赏一个引人入胜的故事，还可以获得宝贵的人生经验，帮助他们成长为富有同情心、谦逊和具有社会意识的个体。
