2. 职称英语
  3. In 1951, Time magazine set out to paint a portrait of the nation’s youth, th

In 1951, Time magazine set out to paint a portrait of the nation’s youth, th

游客2023-08-11  20
问题     In 1951, Time magazine set out to paint a portrait of the nation’s youth, those born into the Great Depression. It doomed them as the Silent Generation, and a generally dull lot: cautious and obedient, uninterested in striking out in new directions or shaping the great issues of the day—the outwardly efficient types whose inner agonies the novel "Revolutionary Road" would analyze a decade later.
    "Youth’s ambitions have shrunk," the magazine declared. "Few youngsters today want to mine diamonds in South Africa, ranch in Paraguay, climb Mount Everest, find a cure for cancer, sail around the world or build an industrial empire. Some would like to own a small, independent business, but most want a good job with a big firm, and with it, a kind of suburban idyll(田园生活)." The young soldier "lacks flame," students were "docile notetakers." And the young writer’s talent "sometimes turns out to be nothing more than a byproduct of his nervous disposition."
    "The best thing that can be said for American youth, in or out of uniform, is that it has learned that it must try to make the best of a bad and difficult job, whether that job is life, war, or both," Time concluded. "The generation which has been called the oldest young generation in the world has achieved a certain maturity."
    Today we are in a recession the depth and duration of which are unknown; Friday’s job loss figures were just the latest suggestion that it could well be prolonged and profound rather than shorter and shallower.
    So what of the youth shaped by what some are already calling the Great Recession? Will a publication looking back from 2030 damn them with such faint praise? Will they marry younger, be satisfied with stable but less exciting jobs? Will their children mock them for reusing tea bags and counting pennies as if this paycheck were the last? At the very least, they will deal with tremendous instability, just as their Depression forebears did.
    "The ’30s challenged the whole idea of the American dream, the idea of open economic possibilities," said Morris Dickstein, an English professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "The version you get of that today is the loss of confidence on the part of both parent and children that life in the next generation will inevitably be better."
    How today’s young will be affected 10, 20 or 40 years on will depend on many things. If history is any guide, what will matter most is where this recession generation is in the historical process. [br] Morris Dickstein points out that people now _____.
选项 A、tend to believe in a prosperous future
B、can rely on their children for a better life
C、lose faith in the open economic possibilities
D、was hopeless at a better life for their children
答案 D
解析 第6段末句句末的that life in the next generation…是loss of confidence的同位语从句，意为“人们不相信下一代的生活会更好”，选项D为本题答案。该段首句提到的the open economic possibilities(各种赚钱的可能性)是美国梦的内容，C误解了原文的意思。
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