To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians

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To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians（基督教徒）ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil（邪恶的）. So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to be the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell（地狱）.What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Tough the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit—or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert  Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “What are you afraid of?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.
小题1:The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because ______.

A．it made Christians evil.

B．it was the apple of Eden

C．it came from a forbidden land

D．it was religiously unacceptable

小题2:What can we infer the underlined part in Paragraph 3 ?

A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down

B．There was little progress in the study of the tomato

C．The tomato was still refused in most western countries

D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato

小题3:What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?

A．To make himself a hero

B．To remove people’s fear of the tomato

C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato

D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory

小题4:What is the main purpose of the passage ?

A．To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato

B．To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato

C．To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato

D．To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence

答案

小题1:D
小题2:C
小题3:B
小题4:C

解析

本文讲述了西红柿进入欧洲的“辛酸血泪史”，呵呵。原本产于南美洲的西红柿（好像之前也叫狼果），因为和基督教道德里的伊甸园的禁果“沾上了关系”，所以根本无法进入欧洲。直到勇敢的人儿站出来品尝，才逐渐为其正名。注意几个词组：drag one’s feet 拖拖拉拉；蹒跚而行   carry the day取胜
小题1:欧洲本就是基督教思想控制的地区，西红柿自打在南美发现开始，就悲惨地和禁果等同起来，不能进入欧洲，当然是宗教的不接受。
小题2:drag one’s feet本意是拖拖拉拉，做事不利索，下划线部分不是指的缓慢下来，而是指的自始自终就没快过，故不选A。B项错在“study”上，欧洲人当时做的并非是对西红柿研究，而是根本地拒绝。D项的“get rid of…”没有道理。
小题3:根据短文最后一段内容可知，Robert Johnson当众吃西红柿的主要原因在于他想让人们摆脱对西红柿的恐惧。因此，正确答案为B选项。
小题4:判断文章的主要意图，A、B项可以轻易排除。C、D两项我比较了很久，最终选择了C项，虽说选对了，我都感觉有点幸运的成分。C项是说展现人们对于西红柿态度的变化，D项是说展现西红柿如何摆脱宗教影响的过程。这两个选项让我至少想了三分钟。后来我是这样想的：西红柿的一生虽然充满坎坷，而且宗教的确在它的血泪史里有着梦魇一般的作用，但是并非是唯一的影响因素。而且第三段更是讲解了人们对于西红柿态度开始动摇，虽然“Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato”，但也有著名的种植专家的女儿写下的怀疑，这些都是实实在在的人的态度的“变化”，并没有刻意去描写宗教的影响；在最后一段里，真正拯救和吃下西红柿的人还是个美国人，他用自己勇敢的行为，给那些前来观看他死亡的人以有力一击。而在这些故事的描写中，也和宗教就没有太大关系了。最后我考虑的是：在“人”的态度变化和西红柿本身地位变化的“过程”选择上，我还是倾向于选择了内涵似乎更深层次的“人”的因素。所以综上所述，宗教只是构成文章的“重要因素”和“起因”，并非贯穿文章的“线索”。