学进去

As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight. Each one was trying to force the other’s hand down onto the table. There was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the negro and at the negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro’s hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched. The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The negro’s shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him. Then the negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance. But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.

Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company.

Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.

For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.

Quoted from The Old Man and the Sea

1．Since the old man is the main character, in the hand game, why does Hemingway put more efforts in describing his opponent the negro?

A．Because Hemingway himself is an anti-racist who wants to support the colored race.

B．By doing so, he indirectly shows how strong and determined the old man is to readers.

C．He shifts readers’ attention to a new character to neutralize the nervous atmosphere.

D．There is no need to describe the old man because he is well-known to all readers.

2．What does the underlined word “unleashed” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．spare

B．restrict

C．reduce

D．loose

3．Which of the followings is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Many bettors were afraid of losing their money so they wanted to call the game a draw.

B．The old man had owed his victory over the negro more to his will than to his strength.

C．The referee had been convinced by the bettors that the game be considered a draw

D．Regular hand games should be a good practice to enhance the old man’s fishing skills

4．What can be inferred from the whole passage?

A．The old man defeated the negro more than once in the matches with his will power

B．Many workers working on the docks had showed no respect towards the old man.

C．The old man had to self-feed himself a lot so as to stay competitive in the game.

D．The negro was not as strong and athletic as the old man had expected him to be.