SAT小说必读之伟大的狄更斯（上）《双城记》： 自由 平等 博爱 或 死亡
Willey的书房，学到的不仅是考试
一、楔子：从狄更斯开始
从今天开始，我们来谈狄更斯。
在西方经典小说中，总有一些作家是躲不过的，而狄更斯就在其中。所谓誉满天下，谤亦随之。批判狄更斯小说通俗浅薄、缺乏思想深度的，大有人在。但狄更斯的小说，历经150余年，依然读者众多，而那些所谓见识不凡的批评家，却早已淹没在历史的浩瀚烟波中。
分享一句很解气的骂人话，“尔曹身与名俱灭，不废江河万古流”，杜甫写的，以后再有自鸣得意的妄人，就送他这句话。
二、经典节选
1、最好的时代 vs 最坏的时代
狄更斯的遣词造句，是出名的经典。先看看这段家喻户晓的句子，也是咱们今天讨论的这本小说《双城记》的开场：
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
作为非主流的文艺青年，这段话给初读者带来的震撼是很容易体会的。不多评价，背下即可。
2、人物特征 vs 事件情节
我们来谈谈怎么读小说。
我们不去罗列和分析各种小说的解构理论，而从一个普通读者，一个高中生的视角，谈一下怎么阅读小说。小说中有很多要素，建议学生首先去关注的，是人物的情感和人物之间的关系。至于时代、风景、矛盾冲突、写作手法、遣词造句等等，都可以粗略理解成，是为人物的情感特征和人物关系服务的。
在阅读经典小说时，要去注意，人物的情感会随着时间和事件的推进而改变，人物是多元而饱满的；而阅读SAT考试这种小说节选时，由于篇幅有限（800-1000字），人物情感是单一而相对固定的。
所以在阅读长篇小说时，要不断体会人物情感的渐变性，而阅读片段节选时，要时刻关注人物情感的核心特征。优秀的作家，是可以寥寥数笔把人物变得鲜活起来的。这一点，我们未来在阅读各种经典小说时，会有深刻体会。反之，非经典的小说，人物基本单薄而无变化，就会乏味很多。
我们看一个《双城记》中的片段。
Book2 Chapter 5: The Jackal
`You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses today. Every question told.'
`I always am sound; am I not?'
`I don't gainsay it. What has roughen'ed your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.'
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
`The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,' said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, `the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!'
`Ah!' returned the other, sighing:`yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for otherboys, and seldom did my own.'
`And why not?'
`God knows. It was my way, I suppose.'
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
`Carton,' said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it,`your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.
`Oh, botheration!' returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh,`don't you be moral!'
`How have I done what I have done?' said Stryver; `how do I do what I do?'
`Partly through paying me to helpyou, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.'
`I had to get into the front rank; Iwas not born there, was I ?'
`I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,' said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.
`Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,' pursued Carton, `you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always -- nowhere.'
`And whose fault was that?'
`Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and shouldering and pressing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's agloomy thing, however, to talk about one's Own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.'
`Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,' said Stryver, holding up his glass.`Are you turned in a pleasant direction?'
Apparently not, for he became gloomyagain.
这个段落，给人很深印象。两个主要人物，Stryver和Carton，如同事物的两极，赫然纸上：
Stryver老练炫耀，不择手段获得高位，而Carton却一直受Stryver打压，郁郁不得志。这个章节，名为The Jackal（豺狗），其实就是Stryver作为lion（狮子），不断打压Carton，阻止他进一步发展，还不断教训他，指指点点，以抬高自我；反之，Carton也只能采取居下位者的自保策略。
3、场景描写
人物特征和情感冲突，只是读小说的基本主线之一，而在主干道外，有很多风景，是足可以去领略的。所以，千万不要走极端，只走高速公路，而忽略了沿路的美景。
狄更斯的小说，在小团圆式的温柔结尾之余，其实处处体现着18-19世纪，普通人民的苦难生活。有时那种阴冷的笔调，真的是需要强大的内心支持，才能够写完的。
试举一例：
Book1 Chapter 5: The Wine-shop
A LARGE cask of wine had been dropped and broken, street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their business or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants mouths; others made small mud embankments, to stem the wine a sit ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been as cavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
一个葡萄酒桶裂开了，酒洒一地，周围的男人女人，如腐肉动物般用各种破烂容器去吸食地上的脏酒，结果在一个没有水沟的街道，不但酒被清除一净，还能连带清除烂泥……这种笔法，是需要佩服的。
所以，读小说，要细致一些。高中生很容易出现的问题，就是一遇到看不太懂的段落，就直接跳过，也就错失了本应见到的风景。
试想，当我们连这样的段落都读过了，将来看到国内的新闻，某某地区，卡车翻了，热情的村民一起来哄抢橘子西瓜时，还会动容吗？
不会了。因为已经见过这一场景最好、最阴冷的写法了。
三、历史背景
谈一下《双城记》的历史背景：法国大革命。这在后面去谈美国历史，尤其是制宪会议、华盛顿总统、杰弗逊总统时，都会涉及。当然，还有Thomas Paine 和 Edmund Burke隔空论剑式的《全球对话》。
1、死亡阴影
有关法国大革命的研究书籍，也是浩如烟波。最近有一个学生，暑假的时候，去法国游学，坐在草坪上，和法国的教授畅谈法国大革命，那种感受，想想都觉得开心。
我们今天只是从一个切片，简单谈一下对法国大革命的印象，那就是《双城记》中不断出现的一个说法：
of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death（自由、平等、博爱或死亡）
这就是笼罩《双城记》第三部分的一条阴霾主线，当时的暴民统治！
所以，不要太相信民主，就像不要太相信总统一样。总要记得一句话：
小知识分子警惕政府，大知识分子警惕民众。
当然，人们总是健忘的，或者说选择性遗忘的。当我们今天在课堂上说起法国大革命的时候，总是一厢情愿的去援引“自由、平等、博爱”这样美好的词汇，却唯独忘记了，与之相伴的“死亡”阴影。
2、法国大革命下的北美政府
简单说一下法国大革命和美国的关系。
当时的美国联邦政府刚刚成立，公选华盛顿将军为第一任总统，《独立宣言》的作者杰弗逊是当时的国务卿。因为二人性格和政见的不同，华盛顿选择在法国大革命的时候，美国保持中立地位，而杰弗逊那种颇有革命气质的人，却积极号召美国站在法国一边，打击英国商船。
相关细节，详见拙作：
总之，幸而华盛顿总统眼光深远、极其冷静地力排众议，坚持初建的美国政府在法国大革命中保持中立态度。后来的历史表明，如果不是华盛顿的智慧决断，刚刚成立的美国很可能迅速夭折。由此，华盛顿在其告别演说中，也确立了一条影响美国近150年的国策：
中立不结盟政策。
3、古人之同情
还有一个细节，很有意思：女主角露西远没有想象中可爱，而且动不动就晕倒，好像林妹妹一样的病秧子。
只好说，我们在阅读经典小说时，有同时具备“古人之同情”。露西的晕倒，是当时有教养女孩的标配、淑女的象征，就如同现在我们对名门闺秀，要求一些必要的谈吐举止一样。
4、卡顿赴义
很多人会感慨，《双城记》让人尤其感动的，就是卡顿（Sydney Carton）的最后赴义，但总想不通，为什么他会这么做？甚至还开玩笑说，如果是自己的话，干脆看着露西的丈夫上刑场，他（卡顿）才好有机可趁。
首先，原著中已有解释，就是在《双城记》的最后一章，写了卡顿赴义后的各种幻象，表达作者对未来的美好祝愿，很感人。除此之外，我觉得还可以从两方面略作解释。
一方面可以用当时的绅士准则来解释，而这种准则的根源，就是中世纪的贵族荣誉感；那个时代的中上层男性，从小的教育就是要做一个绅士（Gentleman），包括诚实守信、重视名誉、勇敢坚强、保护女性等，很像中国古代的“士”，一诺千金，舍生取义。因此，虽然卡顿一生怀才不遇，有志难舒，同时身处律师行业，见多了人性的丑恶，却能够对露西保持诺言，维系一种纯洁的爱恋；即使女方已经嫁为人妇，生儿育女，卡顿也能历经十年而不改初心。
另一方面，《双城记》所描写的时代，毕竟只是18世纪末期，交通和通信还不发达，人的活动范围有限，能够结交到的人群也有限，因此卡顿才有可能对露西情有独钟，而又能经常见面。如果换成今天这种地球村，交通和通信日新月异，消费主义横行，娱乐至死，再期盼卡顿这样的人出现，也确实难上加难。
说真的，美国人一生要搬十次以上的家，就算真有卡顿这样的眷恋，他能每次都正好赶上和露西家在同一个城市吗？
四、精彩章节推荐
Book 1 Chapter 1 The Period
Book 1 Chapter 5 The Wine-shop
Book 2 Chapter 1 Five Years Later
Book 2 Chapter 5 The Jackal
Book 2 Chapter 22 The Sea still Rises
Book 3 Chapter 1 In Secret
Book 3 Chapter 2 The Grindstone
Book 3 Chapter 4 Calm in Storm
Book 3 Chapter 10 The Substance ofthe Shadow
Book 3 Chapter 15 The Footsteps Dieout for Ever
下期预告：
伟大的狄更斯（中）《远大前程》：对人类的祝福
往期回顾
1、经典课程：
2、SAT vs ACT：
3、SAT考试：
4、SAT考前“六日谈”系列：