To Kill a Mockingbird - Horrible Mrs. Dubose 一个临死老妇人的意愿
我在整理我的公众号文章的时候发现了很多好的资料，我以前自己写的时候都没有意识到有多宝贵。我的读者估计更加不会在乎和珍惜了。除了啰啰嗦嗦的洗脑和对于大众家长在学习上的不上心的批评，我还有很多干货，其中不乏一些好的学习资料，写作的和阅读的。以后我会及时把这些平时在我阅读的时候注意到的瑰宝罗列出来。可能因为教学的关系，我在阅读的时候特别注意一些细节描写和情节铺排的地方，但是通常由于时间上的错综安排，我的那些想法不能第一时间和我的学生分享，现在我觉得可以在公众号的文章里以及我的教学笔记中进行细致分析。
She was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin. Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster.
When Jem came to a word he didn’t know, he skipped it, but Mrs. Dubose would catch him and make him spell it out.
As he read along, I noticed that Mrs. Dubose’s corrections grew fewer and farther between, that Jem had even left one sentence dangling in mid-air. She was not listening.
From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate faintly. Cords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would draw
them in, then open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a private existence of its own. It worked separate and apart from the rest of her, out and in, like a clam hole at low tide. Occasionally it would say, “Pt,” like some viscous substance coming to a boil.
The alarm clock went off and scared us stiff. A minute later, nerves still tingling, Jem and I were on the sidewalk headed for home. We did not run away, Jessie sent us: before the clock wound down she was in the room pushing Jem and me out of it.
“Shoo,” she said, “you all go home.” Jem hesitated at the door.
“It’s time for her medicine,” Jessie said. As the door swung shut behind us I saw Jessie walking quickly toward Mrs. Dubose’s bed.
The next afternoon at Mrs. Dubose’s was the same as the first, and so was the next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything would begin normally—that is, Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem for a while on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our father’s nigger-loving propensities; she would grow increasingly silent, then go away from us. The alarm clock would ring, Jessie would shoo us out, and the rest of the day was ours.
Atticus came in. He went to the bed and took Mrs. Dubose’s hand. “I was coming from the office and didn’t see the children,” he said. “I thought they might still be here.”
“Do you know what time it is, Atticus?” she said. “Exactly fourteen minutes past five. The alarm clock’s set for five-thirty. I want you to know that.”
It suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a little longer at Mrs. Dubose’s, that the alarm clock went off a few minutes later every day, and that she was well into one of her fits by the time it sounded. Today she had antagonized Jem for nearly two hours with no intention of having a fit, and I felt hopelessly trapped. The alarm clock was the signal for our release; if one day it did not ring, what would we do?
“Only a week longer, I think,” she said, “just to make sure...”
“Just one more week, son,” said Atticus. “No,” said Jem. “Yes,” said Atticus.
The following week found us back at Mrs. Dubose’s. The alarm clock had ceased sounding, but Mrs. Dubose would release us with, “That’ll do,”
Jem’s chin would come up, and he would gaze at Mrs. Dubose with a face devoid of resentment. Through the weeks he had cultivated an expression of polite and detached interest, which he would present to her in answer to her most blood-
curdling inventions.
At last the day came. When Mrs. Dubose said, “That’ll do,” one afternoon, she added, “And that’s all. Good-day to you.”
It was over. We bounded down the sidewalk on a spree of sheer relief, leaping and howling.
We had not seen Mrs. Dubose for over a month. She was never on the porch any more when we passed.
“She’s dead, son,” said Atticus. “She died a few minutes ago.”
“She’s not suffering any more. She was sick for a long time. Son, didn’t you know what her fits were?”
Jem shook his head.
“Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict,” said Atticus. “She took it as a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she was too contrary—”
Atticus said, “Just before your escapade she called me to make her will. Dr. Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Her business affairs were in
perfect order but she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of order.’” “What was that?” Jem was perplexed.
“She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.”
Jem said, “You mean that’s what her fits were?”
“Yes, that’s what they were. Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were concentrated on that alarm clock. If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been some distraction.”
以上这一段是《杀死一只知更鸟》中的小片段，可能和故事本身的主题并没有多大的关联，小说是从一个小女孩的眼光看待一件涉及种族歧视的事件。但是除了带有很强的政治意味，还是一部非常好的儿童文学，讲述了小孩子日常生活。
我会在我的课上对以上的文章进行精读分析的。
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