hce_nthu
113年
英文
第 49 題
📖 題組：
Reading 6 Most schoolchildren are taught the Declaration of Independence’s most famous lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But relatively few children or adults today are as familiar with the right to revolt that follows: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it….When a long train of abuse and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” When Thomas Jefferson penned those words, he owned hundreds of enslaved people. Yet he was acutely aware that Black people yearned for freedom no less than the white colonists who had waged the American Revolution and that no principle of justice could defend slavery. Even God, he later claimed, would likely side with enslaved people if they organized a successful revolt against their enslavers. In Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785, Jefferson admitted that rebellions were a legitimate, rational response to an immoral and inhumane system: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, and exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference!” Jefferson’s anxious reflections were a kind of inheritance, something passed down from generation to generation among uneasy white enslavers. At the heart of slavery lay a terrifying conundrum---an epic struggle between the enslavers who sought to extract labor, loyalty, and submission from their human property and the enslaved people who longed for freedom and were willing to obtain their liberation by any means necessary. Jefferson, whose ancestors had been enslaving Africans on large Virginia plantations since the seventeenth century, understood this dilemma well. Slavery, he once quipped, was akin to having a “wolf by the ear”---white people could not release their grip on it, but they also knew that beneath the surface boiled a formidable Black rage that could not be fully contained. From the founding of the original thirteen colonies, white people in the North and South lived in constant fear that the men and women they whipped, raped, and forced to work without pay would, if given the chance, rise up and take revenge on their white enslavers. This is why governmental surveillance and severe punishment of black people began almost concurrently with the introduction of slavery itself. In 1669, the Carolina colony granted every free white man “absolute Power and Authority over his Negro Slaves.” Within decades, Carolina law drastically bolstered white authority, mandating that all white people ought to be responsible for policing all Black people’s activities. Any white person who failed to properly monitor suspicious Black activity would be fined forty shillings. This notion---that Black people were inherently devious and criminal, and that white people were required to monitor and police them---ultimately defined the nature of race relations in the United States.
Reading 6 Most schoolchildren are taught the Declaration of Independence’s most famous lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But relatively few children or adults today are as familiar with the right to revolt that follows: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it….When a long train of abuse and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” When Thomas Jefferson penned those words, he owned hundreds of enslaved people. Yet he was acutely aware that Black people yearned for freedom no less than the white colonists who had waged the American Revolution and that no principle of justice could defend slavery. Even God, he later claimed, would likely side with enslaved people if they organized a successful revolt against their enslavers. In Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785, Jefferson admitted that rebellions were a legitimate, rational response to an immoral and inhumane system: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, and exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference!” Jefferson’s anxious reflections were a kind of inheritance, something passed down from generation to generation among uneasy white enslavers. At the heart of slavery lay a terrifying conundrum---an epic struggle between the enslavers who sought to extract labor, loyalty, and submission from their human property and the enslaved people who longed for freedom and were willing to obtain their liberation by any means necessary. Jefferson, whose ancestors had been enslaving Africans on large Virginia plantations since the seventeenth century, understood this dilemma well. Slavery, he once quipped, was akin to having a “wolf by the ear”---white people could not release their grip on it, but they also knew that beneath the surface boiled a formidable Black rage that could not be fully contained. From the founding of the original thirteen colonies, white people in the North and South lived in constant fear that the men and women they whipped, raped, and forced to work without pay would, if given the chance, rise up and take revenge on their white enslavers. This is why governmental surveillance and severe punishment of black people began almost concurrently with the introduction of slavery itself. In 1669, the Carolina colony granted every free white man “absolute Power and Authority over his Negro Slaves.” Within decades, Carolina law drastically bolstered white authority, mandating that all white people ought to be responsible for policing all Black people’s activities. Any white person who failed to properly monitor suspicious Black activity would be fined forty shillings. This notion---that Black people were inherently devious and criminal, and that white people were required to monitor and police them---ultimately defined the nature of race relations in the United States.
What is the main point of referring to Thomas Jefferson in the passage?
- A To expose hypocrisy in Jefferson’s promotion of the idea “all men are created equal”
- B To invoke the idealism of The Declaration of Independence
- C To raise awareness of Black people’s yearning for freedom
- D To advocate that white people ought to be responsible for policing Black people’s activities
- E To illustrate the nature of race relations in the United States
思路引導 VIP
請觀察文章的結構：作者從傑佛遜在《獨立宣言》中的理想出發，接著轉向他私下的焦慮與「抓著狼耳朵」的譬喻，最後結尾在美國法律對非裔族群的嚴密監控。請思考：作者從這一位「國父」級人物的內心掙扎出發，最後導向整個國家的法律制度，這是在試圖解釋美國社會中哪一種長期的發展與現象？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你準確地掌握了文章的宏觀核心！這題考查的是**「作者意圖與段落功能」**，難度屬於 Medium 到 Hard。許多同學會被選項 (A) 誤導，認為只是在揭露傑佛遜（Thomas Jefferson）的虛偽，但你展現了更高層次的閱讀理解，看出了作者是如何以傑佛遜作為引子，進而勾勒出整個時代的社會面貌。
從個人矛盾到社會體制的連結
作者引用傑佛遜的文字與其蓄奴的身分，並非單純為了批評他個人的品行，而是要點出當時白人統治階級內心深處的**「恐懼與矛盾」**（如文中提到的「抓著狼耳朵」比喻）。傑佛遜對革命權力的主張與他對奴隸反抗的恐懼，正反映了美國早期社會中，統治者如何透過法律、監視與嚴懲來維持奴隸制度，這種恐懼與控制的循環，最終形塑了美國種族關係的本質。因此，選擇 (E) 能最全面地涵蓋從個人心理到國家法律建制化過程的論點。
▼ 還有更多解析內容