The Great Gatsby. Wielki Gatsby w wersji do nauki angielskiego ebook

W SERII KLASYKA PO ANGIELSKU:

A Christmas Carol

Opowieść wigilijna

Alice in Wonderland

Alicja w Krainie Czarów

Anne of Green Gables

Ania z Zielonego Wzgórza

Christmas Stories

Opowiadania świąteczne

Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

Baśnie Hansa Christiana Andersena

Fanny Hill. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Wspomnienia kurtyzany

Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Peter and Wendy

Piotruś Pan

Pride and Prejudice

Duma i uprzedzenie

Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Opowiadania Allana Edgara Poe

Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection

Opowiadania autora Wielkiego Gatsby’ego

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Part 1

Przygody Sherlocka Holmesa

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Part 2

Przygody Sherlocka Holmesa. Ciąg dalszy

The Blue Castle

Błękitny Zamek

The Great Gatsby

Wielki Gatsby

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Pies Baskerville’ów

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Portret Doriana Graya

The Secret Garden

Tajemniczy ogród

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Doktor Jekyll i pan Hyde

The Time Machine

Wehikuł czasu

The War of the Worlds

Wojna światów

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Czarnoksiężnik z Krainy Oz

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Trzech panów w łódce (nie licząc psa)

Wstęp

Wielki Gatsby to najsłynniejsza powieść wybitnego amerykańskiego pisarza, Francisa Scotta Fitzgeralda (1896–1940).

Książka Fitzgeralda to nie tylko niezwykła historia romantycznej miłości i amerykańskiej kariery od pucybuta do milionera. To przede wszystkim barwny i wiarygodny obraz Ameryki szalonych lat dwudziestych, okresu niespotykanej dotąd prosperity, powstawania imponujących fortun, rozwoju świata przestępczego, a także gwałtownego postępu technologicznego oraz przemian obyczajowych i kulturowych.

Wydana w 1925 roku powieść odniosła sukces dopiero w latach pięćdziesiątych XX wieku, już po śmierci autora. Ze względu na rozmaitość poruszanych wątków, stała się lekturą omawianą w amerykańskich szkołach, a wielu twórców teatralnych i filmowych zainspirowała do licznych adaptacji. Ostatnią z nich jest oszałamiający pod względem wizualnym (choć nieprzychylnie przyjęty przez większość krytyków) film w reżyserii Baza Luhrmanna z 2013 roku z Leonardem DiCaprio w roli tytułowej.

Warto dodać, że powieść, choć powstała ponad 90 lat temu, napisana jest językiem nowoczesnym, a jej wartka akcja sprawia, że od książki trudno się oderwać.

Opracowany przez nas podręcznik oparty na oryginalnym tekście powieści został skonstruowany według przejrzystego schematu.

Na marginesach tekstu podano

objaśnienia

trudniejszych wyrazów.

Każdy rozdział jest zakończony krótkim testem jednokrotnego wyboru, sprawdzającym stopień

rozumienia tekstu

.

Zawarte w każdym rozdziale

słownictwo

zostaje omówione w kilku następujących po nim krótkich sekcjach:

typowe kolokacje wybranego wyrazu;

sekcja „Uwaga!”, w której prezentujemy omówienie kłopotliwego dla polskich uczniów wyrazu (tzw

. false friends

);

sekcja rozszerzająca i objaśniająca słownictwo z danej dziedziny;

sekcja objaśniająca niektóre różnice między angielskim amerykańskim (językiem powieści) i angielskim brytyjskim, którego najczęściej uczą się Polacy;

ciekawostki z zakresu językoznawstwa, historii języka i kultury, czyli etymologiczne rozważania na temat wybranego wyrazu występującego w rozdziale.

W dziale poświęconemu gramatyce Czytelnik znajdzie:

omówienie wybranego zagadnienia gramatycznego, ilustrowanego fragmentem rozdziału;

omówienie wybranego zagadnienia dotyczącego stosowania przedimków (

a, an, the

).

Dla dociekliwych został również opracowany komentarz do wybranych tematów związanych z kulturą i historią.

Różnorodne ćwiczenia pozwolą Czytelnikowi powtórzyć i sprawdzić omówione w podręczniku zagadnienia leksykalne i gramatyczne. Alfabetyczny wykaz wyrazów objaśnianych na marginesie powieści znajduje się w słowniczku. Odpowiedzi do wszystkich zadań zamkniętych są podane w kluczu na końcu książki.

1Chapter

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostilelevity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabbyimpressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I’m supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, “Why--ye-es” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the “Yale News”--and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals--like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires--all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he’d left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don’t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it--I had no sight into Daisy’s heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminateswank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruffhusky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiantwistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

“It belonged to Demaine the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling--and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

“I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.”

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again--the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.

“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there’s a persistent wail all night along the North Shore.”

“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly, “You ought to see the baby.”

“I’d like to.”

“She’s asleep. She’s two years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”

“Never.”

“Well, you ought to see her. She’s----”

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

“What you doing, Nick?”

“I’m a bond man.”

“Who with?”

I told him.

“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”

“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else.”

At this point Miss Baker said “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started--it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”

“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted. “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”

“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, “I’m absolutely in training.”

Her host looked at her incredulously.

“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erectcarriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”

“I don’t know a single----”

“You must know Gatsby.”

“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly. “What do people plan?”

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

“Look!” she complained. “I hurt it.”

We all looked--the knuckle was black and blue.

“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a ¾ ”

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here--and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard?”

“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be--will be utterlysubmerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we----”

“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winkingferociously toward the fervent sun.

“You ought to live in California--” began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and----” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. “--and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?”

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”

“That’s why I came over tonight.”

“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose----”

“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.

“Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position.”

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. “An absolute rose?”

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge ofcoherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor----” I said.

“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”

“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.

“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”

“I don’t.”

“Why----” she said hesitantly, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”

“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don’t you think?”

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away----” her voice sang “----It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”

“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables.”

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing--my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”

“I wasn’t back from the war.”

“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

“I suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything.”

“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”

“Very much.”

“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about--things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool--that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated--God, I’m sophisticated!”

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the “Saturday Evening Post”--the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”

“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”

“Oh,--you’re Jordan Baker.”

I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”

“If you’ll get up.”

“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”

“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of--oh--fling you together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing----”

“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”

“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”

“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.

“Her family.”

“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.

“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white----”

“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.

“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know----”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called “Wait!”

“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”

“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”

“It’s libel. I’m too poor.”

“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people so it must be true.”

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich--nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms--but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone--fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Rozumienie tekstu

Klucz >>>

Nick Carraway

was a descendant of a duke.

took after his great-grandfather.

came from a wealthy family.

didn’t fight during the war.

As Daisy spoke to Nick,

Jordan Baker completely ignored him.

her voice was full of emotion.

she murmured in a low voice so that Nick had to lean toward her.

she made a witty joke.

When Daisy left the dinner table and entered the house,

Jordan Baker started to gossip.

Nick asked Jordan about Gatsby.

Tom continued talking about a book he’d read.

an argument broke out at the table.

Which of the following isn’t true about Tom?

Nick met him before.

He didn’t hear about Nick’s employer before.

Sometimes he sounded scornful and arrogant.

He was interested in science.

Jordan Baker

turned out to be someone Nick had met before.

was an old friend of Daisy’s.

had no relatives.

had a big family who didn’t care about her.

O słowach

Kolokacje

I had the high intention of reading many other books.

Do przymiotników, które najczęściej łączą się z rzeczownikiem intention, należą: declared (stanowczy), firm (stanowczy), general (ogólny), original (pierwotny, początkowy), np.:

His original intention to work all day turned out a complete failure

(Jego początkowy zamiar, żeby pracować cały dzień, okazał się kompletnym fiaskiem).

Uwaga!

But the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother.

Należy pamiętać, że wyraz actual oznacza prawdziwy, rzeczywisty. Z kolei actually znaczy w rzeczywistości, tak naprawdę.Aktualny to current, present, a aktualnie– currently, at present, at the moment.

Więcej słów

Daisy was my second cousin once removed.

Cousin to zarówno kuzynka, kuzyn, jak i siostra cioteczna lub brat cioteczny. Określenia dotyczące stopnia pokrewieństwa, takie jak first, second itd. czy once (twice, thrice itd.) removed, mogą początkowo sprawiać problemy.

Liczebniki porządkowe (first, second, third itd.) odnoszą się w tym przypadku do liczby pokoleń, jaka dzieli kuzynów od wspólnego przodka. Jeśli zatem wspólny przodek jest babcią lub dziadkiem jednego z kuzynów, relację między kuzynami określimy jako first cousins. Jeśli najbliższy wspólny przodek jest prababcią lub pradziadkiem jednego z kuzynów, a dla drugiego jest prababcią, pradziadkiem lub kimś pokoleniowo jeszcze starszym, relację między kuzynami określimy second cousins. Jeżeli najmłodszy pokoleniowo dla przynajmniej jednego z kuzynów okaże się prapradziadek, będą to third cousins.

Drugi aspekt opisujący stopień pokrewieństwa, removal (możemy ten termin przetłumaczyć roboczo jako „oddalenie”), odnosi się do różnicy pokoleniowej między dwoma kuzynami. Jeśli zatem ich najmłodszym pokoleniowo wspólnym przodkiem będzie osoba, która dla obojga jest dziadkiem, pradziadkiem czy prapradziadkiem, nie mamy do czynienia z różnicą pokoleń między kuzynami i pokrewieństwo tych dwóch osób nazwiemy odpowiednio first, second czy third cousins bez dodatkowego opisu.

Jeśli natomiast wspólny przodek dla jednego z kuzynów jest dziadkiem, a dla drugiego – pradziadkiem, osoby te różni jedno pokolenie. Wówczas stopień ich pokrewieństwa opisujemy wyrażeniem once removed. Im większa różnica pokoleniowa między dwojgiem kuzynów, tym wyższy będzie stopień „oddalenia”.

Daisy i Nick mieli zatem wspólnego przodka, który dla jednego z nich był prababcią lub pradziadkiem (stąd second cousins), a dla drugiego praprababcią lub prapradziadkiem (stąd once removed).

Amerykański angielski

Fani sportu wiedzą, że football to w amerykańskim angielskim futbol amerykański, czyli gra zupełnie inna niż piłka nożna. Piłka nożna to w amerykańskiej odmianie angielszczyzny soccer. Poniżej znajdziesz obszerne wyjaśnienie tej kwestii.

JESZCZE WIĘCEJ O SŁOWACH

Futbol

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven.

Pewnie nie jest dla nikogo tajemnicą, że Anglosasi są podzieleni, jeśli chodzi o piłkę nożną – zarówno w kwestii gustów, jak i terminologii. Anglicy grają w football i bardzo ten sport kochają, a Amerykanie grywają w soccer i niewiele wiedzą, co to za gra, a nawet uważają go za sport dla małych dzieci. Chyba że grają w swoją wersję footballu, gdzie piłki się nie kopie tylko nosi, gdzie nie ma bramek w europejskim sensie, tylko wielkie, przypominające widelce konstrukcje, gdzie zawodnicy noszą grube ochronne stroje, a to, co w naszej piłce nożnej uchodziłoby za poważny faul, jest standardową zagrywką. Niemniej jednak niekiedy zabierają się za piłkę nożną w naszym rozumieniu.

Dlaczego Amerykanie grają wtedy w soccer? Skąd się to słowo wzięło?

W drugiej połowie XIX wieku piłka nożna stawała się w Anglii coraz bardziej popularnym sportem. Nie miała jednak skodyfikowanych zasad i nie stanowiła oddzielnej od rugby dyscypliny. Od roku 1815 istniał co prawda odnoszący się do piłki nożnej dokument zwany „przepisami z Eton”, a w 1848 roku inny zestaw zasad spisano w Cambridge. Wciąż niestety panował w tej dziedzinie chaos i drużyny, które najczęściej powstawały przy szkołach i uniwersytetach, często przy rozgrywaniu spotkań napotykały poważne problemy.

26 października 1863 roku w pubie The Freemasons’ Tavern przy londyńskiej Great Queen Street odbyło się pierwsze założycielskie spotkanie The Football Association, która to organizacja postawiła sobie za cel ostateczną kodyfikację zasad i uporządkowanie sportowego zamętu. Wzięli w niej udział przedstawiciele jedenastu najważniejszych szkół (klubów): Barnes, Civil Service, Crusaders, Forest of Leytonstone, N.N. (No Names) Club (Kilburn), Crystal Palace, Blackheath, Kensington School, Percival House (Blackheath), Surbiton i Blackheath Proprietary School.

Po sześciu burzliwych spotkaniach organizację opuścił przedstawiciel klubu Blackheath. Nie spodobało mu się, że odrzucono kilka zasad takich jak: „przenoszenie piłki w rękach oraz zatrzymywanie gracza biegnącego z piłką w rękach przy pomocy kopania w piszczele, podcinania i przytrzymywania”. Ta „secesja” zaowocowała w 1871 roku powstaniem The Rugby Association (Stowarzyszenia Rugby).

Powstały więc dwie gry, określane mianem football – association football (której zwolennicy woleli kopać piłkę) i rugby football (ci woleli kopać piłkarzy).

Za interesujące nas słowo soccer Amerykanie powinni dziękować angielskim studentom z końca XIX wieku – mieli oni bowiem zwyczaj skracania słów przez dodawanie do nich końcówki „-er” (np: zamiast breakfast powiadano wśród oksfordzkiej braci brekkers).

Pewien student zapytany, czy grywa w rugger football (piłkę nożną według zasad Rugby Association), odpowiedział: „no, soccer” (skracając w ten sposób słowo association z wyrażenia football association).

Istniało także słowo footer – ale mogło ono z oczywistych powodów odnosić się do obu „piłek nożnych”. Z innych przyczyn (tu zainteresowanych odsyłamy do słownika) nie można było używać jako skrótu pierwszych trzech liter słowa association.

Niektóre źródła podają nazwisko studenta, który użył słowa soccer jako pierwszy – ponoć był nim Charles Wreford Brown (1866–1951), jedna z pierwszych gwiazd futbolu, reprezentant Anglii i wiceprzewodniczący FA, krykiecista i szachista.

W ciągu wielu lat zmieniała się także pisownia słowa. W roku 1889 pisano socca, aby potem przez wersję socker (około 1891) dojść do współczesnego soccer (1895).

Georgia

Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay.

Nazwę Georgia, na cześć króla Jerzego Drugiego (George II), nadał stanowi jego założyciel James Oglethorpe (1696–1785), brytyjski generał i filantrop. O jego filantropii wspominamy nie bez kozery, ponieważ projekt założenia angielskiej kolonii między Karoliną a Florydą – czyli właśnie późniejszej Georgii – powstał z myślą o stworzeniu miejsca, w którym mogłyby znajdować schronienie osoby niewypłacalne (czyt. bankruci) oraz prześladowani w kontynentalnej Europie protestanci. Oglethorpe prowadził kampanię na rzecz likwidacji więzień dla dłużników (debtor’s prisons), które do 1869 roku były w Zjednoczonym Królestwie (w USA do 1833) standardowym sposobem radzenia sobie z delikwentami niebędącymi w stanie uregulować należności. Nasz filantrop chciał, aby zamiast osadzać dłużników w lochu, wysyłano ich do Georgii, gdzie swą kolonizacyjną pracą przyczyniali się do szczęścia ogółu społeczeństwa.

Gramatyka

Rozumienie struktur gramatycznych

Feel like

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

Feel like oznacza mieć (na coś) ochotę. Należy pamiętać, że czasownik ten łączy się tylko z rzeczownikami oraz czasownikami w formie gerund (z końcówką -ing), co ilustrują przykłady:

1. I feel like a cup of strong coffee.

Mam ochotę na filiżankę mocnej kawy.

2. I don’t really feel like staying in tonight.

Zupełnie nie mam ochoty zostawać dziś w domu.

Rzeczowniki zbiorowe

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations.

Rzeczowniki zbiorowe to wyrazy, które odnoszą się na ogół do grup ludzi (jak np. instytucje, organizacje). Oto kilka spośród nich:

army (armia), band (zespół muzyczny), class (klasa), committee (komitet, komisja), company (firma, przedsiębiorstwo), crew (załoga), family (rodzina), government (rząd), jury (ława przysięgłych), police (policja), team (drużyna).

Czasownik, który łączy się z rzeczownikami zbiorowymi, może przyjmować formę liczby pojedynczej lub mnogiej. Forma czasownika zależy od tego, czy daną grupę traktujemy jako niepodzielną całość (czasownik w liczbie pojedynczej), czy jako zbiór poszczególnych jednostek (czasownik w liczbie mnogiej). Porównaj poniższe przykłady:

1. Our family is going on holiday next week.

Nasza rodzina w przyszłym tygodniu wyjeżdża na wakacje.

2. The problem is that my family argue all the time.

Problem polega na tym, że moja rodzina cały czas się kłóci.

W zależności od tego, jak pojmujemy daną grupę, będziemy stosować również zaimki względne. Jeśli mamy na myśli zbiorowość jako całość, odnosimy się do niej za pomocą zaimka which. Jeśli natomiast pojmujemy grupę jako zbiór niezależnych jednostek, użyjemy zaimka who. Ilustrują to poniższe przykłady:

3. My class, which has never been on a school trip abroad, is planning to visit Prague.

Moja klasa, która nigdy nie była na zagranicznej wycieczce szkolnej, planuje wyjazd do Pragi.

4. My class, who don’t learn very well, are going to have problems at the exam.

Moja klasa, która nie uczy się zbyt dobrze, będzie miała problemy na egzaminie.

Przedimki

The Carraways are something of a clan.

Przed nazwiskiem w liczbie mnogiej oznaczającym rodzinę lub małżeństwo noszące to nazwisko używamy przedimka określonego the, np.:

When did we last see the Greens?

Kiedy ostatnio widzieliśmy się z Greenami?

Przed nazwiskiem lub imieniem przedimek na ogół nie występuje. Poprzedzenie nazwiska przedimkiem nieokreślonym a/an jest dopuszczalne w następujących sytuacjach:

(a) kiedy podkreślamy, że osoba, o której mowa, jest nam nieznana, np.:

The manager is talking to a Kowalski.

Kierownik rozmawia z jakimś Kowalskim.

(b) kiedy mamy na myśli pewne cechy charakterystyczne osoby noszącej dane nazwisko, np.:

You’re not a Shakespeare, you better find a decent job.

Żaden z ciebie Szekspir, znajdź lepiej przyzwoitą pracę.

(c) jeśli mamy na myśli dzieło danego artysty, np.:

It must be a Da Vinci.

To musi być (dzieło) Da Vinci.

Przedimek określony the może z kolei poprzedzać nazwisko w następujących sytuacjach:

(a) kiedy musimy wskazać konkretną osobę spośród dwóch (lub więcej) o tym samym nazwisku, np.:

He didn’t mean the McCarthy you know, it was about somebody else.

Nie miał na myśli tego McCarthy’ego, którego znasz, chodziło o kogoś innego.

(b) jeśli zaznaczamy fakt, że osoba, o której mowa, jest powszechnie znana, np.:

I’ve just shaken hands with the Nick Cave.

Właśnie uścisnąłem dłoń temu Nickowi Cave’owi.

(c) jeśli nazwisko poprzedza dodatkowe określenie, np.:

The famous film director Roman Polanski was taken into custody.

Słynny reżyser Roman Polański został aresztowany.

Kultura i historia

My grandfather’s brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War…

American Civil War, czyli wojna secesyjna, była wojną domową, która objęła Stany Zjednoczone w latach 1861–1865. Przed wybuchem wojny nastąpiła secesja, czyli odłączenie jedenastu południowych stanów Ameryki, zwanych odtąd Konfederacją (należały do nich: Karolina Południowa i Północna, Missisipi, Alabama, Floryda, Georgia, Luizjana, Teksas, Wirginia, Tennessee oraz Arkansas). Pozostałe stany utworzyły Unię, natomiast na terenie Kentucky i Missouri powołane zostały rządy zarówno unijne, jak i konfederackie.

Wojna secesyjna miała kilka przyczyn. Jeden z powodów stanowił konflikt w kwestii niewolnictwa. Stany południowe, których gospodarka opierała się na plantacjach, pragnęły niewolnictwo utrzymać, podczas gdy w uprzemysłowionych stanach północnych, w których rosło zapotrzebowanie na wykwalifikowaną siłę roboczą, rozwijał się ruch abolicjonistyczny, mający na celu emancypację niewolników.

Wojna wybuchła w kwietniu 1861 roku, kiedy konfederaci ostrzelali Fort Sumter w Południowej Karolinie. W kwietniu 1865 roku północ odniosła ostateczne zwycięstwo w konflikcie. Bratobójcze walki pochłonęły ponad 650 tysięcy ofiar.

I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.

Great War odnosi się do I wojny światowej (1914–1918). Stronami konfliktu były państwa Ententy, do której należały Wielka Brytania, Francja, Rosja, Serbia, Włochy, Japonia, Stany Zjednoczone oraz wiele mniejszych krajów, oraz Państwa Centralne, czyli Niemcy i Austro-Węgry, wspierane przez Turcję i Bułgarię.

Stany Zjednoczone, początkowo wierne zasadzie nieinterwencji, przystąpiły do wojny późno. Dwa lata wcześniej niemiecka łódź podwodna zatopiła brytyjski statek pasażerski Lusitania ze 128 obywatelami amerykańskimi na pokładzie. Po apelu prezydenta Stanów Zjednoczonych, Thomasa Woodrowa Wilsona, Niemcy postanowili zaprzestać strategii nieograniczonej wojny podwodnej na Oceanie Atlantyckim, jednak w 1917 roku wznowili ataki na wszystkie statki płynące do nieprzyjacielskich portów. Ponieważ strona niemiecka obawiała się coraz bardziej prawdopodobnego udziału USA w konflikcie, niemieckie Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych zaoferowało sojusz Meksykowi, który dzięki działaniom wojennym miał odzyskać ziemie utracone na rzecz Stanów Zjednoczonych w połowie XIX wieku. Po ujawnieniu treści depeszy zawierającej tę propozycję (słynny telegram Zimmermanna) oraz zatopieniu kilku amerykańskich statków handlowych przez Niemców, Kongres Stanów Zjednoczonych wypowiedział im wojnę w kwietniu 1917 roku.

W obliczu konfliktu zbrojnego Stany Zjednoczone powołały do wojska ponad cztery miliony mężczyzn, spośród których poległo lub zaginęło ponad 130 tysięcy. Kraj poniósł również ogromne wydatki związane z wojną.

Midas and Morgan and Maecenas

Midas był mitycznym królem Krety. Dionizos obdarzył go mocą, dzięki której wszystko, czego Midas dotknął, zamieniało się w złoto.

John Pierpoint Morgan (1837–1913), potentat finansowy i posiadacz kolei, należał do najbogatszych ludzi w Ameryce swoich czasów.

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (70 p.n.e.–8 p.n.e.), rzymski polityk, doradca Oktawiana Augusta, pierwszego cesarza Rzymu, zgromadził znaczny majątek, dzięki któremu wspierał współczesnych mu artystów. Do wynagradzanych przez niego twórców należeli Wergiliusz i Horacy. Co ciekawe, Maecenas namawiał poetów do twórczości wspierającej władzę i nowy ustrój wprowadzany przez cesarza Oktawiana Augusta.

Long Island

Long Island to wyspa na południowym wschodzie stanu Nowy Jork. W obrębie miasta Nowy Jork znajdują się jej dwie dzielnice – Brooklyn i Queens. Jest jedenastą co do wielkości (3 629 km2) wyspą Stanów Zjednoczonych.

Like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end.

Jajko Kolumba jest synonimem genialnego w swej prostocie odkrycia. Według anegdoty, gdy krytycy Kolumba próbowali umniejszyć wagę jego odkryć, żeglarz podał w wątpliwość ich intelekt twierdząc, że żaden nie zdoła postawić pionowo jajka na płaskim blacie bez użycia dodatkowych przyborów. Kiedy okazało się, że istotnie żaden z zebranych hiszpańskich arystokratów nie był w stanie tego dokonać, Kolumb lekko nadtłukł jajko i postawił je na sztorc.

The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard

Autor czyni tu aluzję do wydanej w 1920 roku książki Lothropa Stoddarda (1883–1950) The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, w której pisarz postuluje ograniczenie napływu emigrantów do Stanów Zjednoczonych i przewiduje upadek cywilizacji stworzonej przez białą rasę, jeśli ten postulat nie zostanie spełniony.

Ćwiczenia

Klucz >>>

Uzupełnij zdania wyrazami z ramki.

The wonderful view took my ……………… away.

She looked ……………… at their faces to make sure she was told the truth.

I really hate his ………………!

The ……………… was full of pre-cooked products.

I must admit you were ……………… at coping with that situation.

This case is described in today’s ……………… .

“Perhaps it’s you who’s wrong”, she said with a scornful ……………… on her face.

You really are ……………… of emotions.

He sounded ……………… as if he had a cold.

Mike stared ……………… at his wife as if he wasn’t listening at all.

Uzupełnij zdania wyrazami utworzonymi od słów podanych w nawiasach.

“How are things between you and your husband?”, asked Sally ……………… when everybody had left the room. (

obtrusive

)

He smiled ……………… when Sheila entered. (

voluntary

)

The ……………… policeman dealt with the juvenile delinquent easily. (

boil

)

Their ……………… acts have been punished. (

riot

)

She made a totally ……………… remark. (

relevant

)

A sad expression on his face implied he was feeling rather ……………… . (

content

)

Paul is his second cousin twice ……………… . (

remove

)

By her own ……………… Mary owes you a lot. (

admit

)

Uzupełnij luki przedimkami

a

,

an

i

the

lub pozostaw luki puste.

He’s not …… Einstein, but he does well at school.

Do you mean …… Brown who used to work with us?

I believe his surname is …… Stevenson.

Can you believe it? Last night the museum was robbed and …… Munch was stolen.

…… Dickinsons are visiting us tonight, so I have to prepare something special.

The show will be hosted by …… actress Jackie Collins.

Mike said he was supposed to meet …… Smith at his office – I don’t actually know who he was talking about.

…… Mrs. …… Black has just booked a room.

Po lekturze pierwszego rozdziału książki zastanów się, czego dowiadujemy się o Daisy i Tomie. Na podstawie zawartych w rozdziale informacji napisz charakterystykę Toma lub Daisy (około 400 słów).

Pierwsza wojna światowa należy do najbardziej krwawych epizodów w dziejach Stanów Zjednoczonych. Skutki konfliktu zbrojnego objęły natomiast wszystkie sfery życia i działalności ludzkiej – politykę, gospodarkę, kulturę, obyczajowość, itd. Wybierz jeden z aspektów życia społeczeństwa amerykańskiego i przygotuj prezentację multimedialną (około 12 slajdów) lub wypowiedź ustną (około 5 minut), w której omówisz wpływ I wojny światowej na tę dziedzinę.

Klucz

Rozdział 1

<<< Rozumienie tekstu

Rozumienie tekstu

1c, 2b, 3a, 4d, 5b

<<< Ćwiczenia

Ćwiczenie 1

a) breath

b) searchingly

c) guts

d) pantry

e) deft

f) editorial

g) smirk

h) devoid

i) husky

j) blankly

Ćwiczenie 2

a) unobtrusively

b) involuntarily

c) hard-boiled

d) riotous

e) irrelevant

f) discontented

g) removed

h) admission

Ćwiczenie 3

a) an

b) the

c) -

d) a

e) The

f) the

g) a

h) - / -

Słowniczek

A

abortive nieudany

abound obfitować

abounding bujny

abrupt nagły, gwałtowny

abruptly nagle, gwałtownie

abstractedly z roztargnieniem

abstraction roztargnienie

abyss głębia, otchłań

accelerator pedał gazu

accentuate podkreślać, akcentować

acknowledge przyznawać się

acute ostry, przenikliwy

add to powiększać

addenda dopisek, załącznik

adjust oneself odzyskać równowagę

adjustment nastawienie; przystosowanie

admission przyznanie się

adventitious nieoczekiwany

affectation poza, udawanie

agonizingly boleśnie

air atmosfera

airedale aierdale terrier (rasa psów)

ajar uchylony

ale piwo

alight spadać

amid pośród

amorphous bezkształtny

ancestral rodowy

anon niebawem

anteroom przedpokój

anti-climax rozczarowanie; kontrast

apologetically przepraszająco, ze skruchą

appalled przerażony

appalling przerażający, odrzucający

apparently widocznie, wyraźnie, najwyraźniej

apparition zjawa

append dodawać

appendicitus zapalenie wyrostka robaczkowego

arc łuk

arched łukowaty

armistice rozejm, zawieszenie broni

as drunk as a monkey pijany jak świnia

ashheap hałda popiołu

assertion stanowcze stwierdzenie, domaganie się praw

assume przyjmować

astounded zdumiony

at a rakish angle zawadiacko, na bakier

at any rate w każdym razie

attain osiągać

attired odziany

awed bojaźliwy, pełen respektu, zatrwożony

awkward krępujący

awning zasłona

(...)