I have never been to Troy, but David Maule made me feel as if I were standing on the high wall of Troy, watching the fierce war. Thanks to this British author, who adapted the famous Homer’s poem into a lively story, I found it easier to understand this story. Though the story happened over 3000 years ago in a remote place, I was deeply fascinated by it.
The mysterious plot is one of the reasons why I loved The Story of Troy so much, yet I am more interested in the human heroes of the war.
Hector was the eldest son of king of Troy, Priam. He was not only a real hero of Trojan, but was regarded the highest moral hero in Greek classic by later historians. The war started because of the mischief of his brother, Paris, whom he didn’t appreciate. However, since Hector was the commander of the Trojan army, he was obliged to fight with all force. It was really a tragedy that such a valiant man died in the duel with another great warrior, Achilles.
It is natural to see death in a war. As a famous Chinese parable says, “A life can be as slight as a piece of feather, or as weighty as Mount Tai.” Sometimes, one’s glory walks hand in hand with one’s doom. Achilles was such a typical person. His personal charm made The Story of Troy more attractive. He was so crucial because his every appearance in a war encouraged his fellow soldiers and terrified the enemies. Actually, Achilles was half-god who was almost invincible in people’s mind. That’s why his name was memorized long after his death.
Besides the two great men, the wisdom of Odysseus also proved him to be a great hero. He didn’t want to attend the war because he was happily married and had a lovely son. However, since his country was allied to Mycenae, he had to take the command given by the king of Mycenae. I’m quite sure that the story of the wooden horse is widely known, however, few people know who thought of the brilliant idea, that’s why I admired Odysseus so much because he was the person who got the idea. Thanks to the horse, the ten-year war came to an end at last. If you want to know how the wooden horse worked, just read the book.
The ancient Greeks believed that the gods and goddesses also played important roles in the origin, process and ending of the whole story.
The story of the golden apple was such an example. When Eris, the goddess of argument and disagreement, threw out the golden apple to a wedding ceremony on Mount Olympus, a dispute happened. Hera, the queen of gods, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, were all involved in the argument for the apple. None of them was willing to give way, so they turned to Paris for a final judgment. Tempted by Aphrodite’s beauty and promise, Paris handed the apple to her. To keep her word, Aphrodite helped him to get Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, as his wife. That was the cause of the war.
Paris’s choice obviously annoyed the other two goddesses. So during the war, they helped the Greek alliance army while some other gods, such as Apollo and Aphrodite, guarded Troy. When Paris dueled with Helen’s former husband Menelaus, Aphrodite saved Paris when he was about to be finished off.
After the duel between those two people, there was a truce between the Greek alliance and Troy. However, both Hera and Athena were not happy to see it. Hera pursued her husband ZEUS:“ Now, will you send Athena to make the Troyjans break the peace?”(Page 22) Then with Zeus’s permission, Athena went down to start the war again and finally she brought the Greeks to success.
From the whole story, we can see that in ancient Greeks’ view, gods sometimes played a much more important role in their life. However, with the rapid development of science, we have learned that the Greek gods never existed. This is why a recent movie of Troy has not mentioned a single god. Everything happened due to men’s ambition, love, loyalty or jealousy. With those emotion and people’s effort, we human beings can accomplish wonders and be master of the world.
God are of less importance than they used to be. Nonetheless, the gods and goddesses made The Story of Troy more mysterious and marvelous.
I have learnt from the book more than the wonderful story of history, love and war. I believe that human can determine their destiny by their own. I highly recommend this book to my friends with the same interest.
英文读后感-Distance Lends Enchantment to the View
Distance Lends Enchantment to the View
苏海涛 湖北省当阳市当阳一中高二阅读书目：探索太空 Exploring Space （国家地理科学探索丛书）
Looking at dark sky at night for a while, you may see a red star. It has dazzling color. People call it “Mars”.
In the solar system, beyond the third planet, the fourth one is “Mars”. It is a planet which is far away from Earth, about 2 hundred million kilometers on average. It is so charming that many scientists and people want to go there. Yes, distance lends enchantment to the view.
Exploring space is not as easy as you might think. It is beyond your imagination. Scientists still make great contributions to exploring space and they also get good results. Space exploration is developing successfully. Scientists have made great progress with this project in only a few years’ time.
In the past fifty years, people have launched many detectors into the unknown universe and planets. However, most of them ended with failure. These detectors still helped the scientists and people to know more about this science. The first time they launched the detectors to Mars was in 1960s. From then on, two super countries, America and the Soviet Union, started a competition to explore Mars. They never stopped launching detectors to Mars. Even if two thirds of them failed. However, it didn’t stop us from exploring space.
Distance should not be an obstacle to exploring space. At the beginning of 2004. NASA Launched two detectors to Mars, and both of them landed safty. They sent many useful information to Earth. It was really exciting news! Before that, a detector launched by Europe was lost in Universe. It was a shock to the scientific community, but they will never give up.
As a matter of fact, the purpose of launching so many detectors to space is to find a planet with life and the basic element – water.
The moon is far away from Earth, but it is the nearest star to Earth. People have been fascinated by the moon since ancient times until 1969 when astronauts from America landed on the moon. They found that the moon was just a satellite, without water, air, atmosphere and life, so people’s fantasies about moon were broken. The moon is a real “Wide-cold Palace”, it also has very bad weather, extremely cold at night and extremely hot during daytime. Nothing can subsist on the moon. When the astronauts landed on the moon, it was as if the distance went from 380 thousand kilometers to zero kilometers. All the beautiful fantasies and legends about moon were broken, so people now aim their eyes on Mars. They hope that one day the astronauts can step on Mars and realize our new dream.
Since we know the truth of moon, it is not so tempting to us. But poems about the moon can still give us some yearning.
Compare the beginnings of space travel with exploring space today. The exploration of space today is more useful. Many people are fond of Mars because among the nine planets in the solar system it is the most similar to Earth, so we call them “Brother Planets”. On Mars, there is a thin atmosphere lay and some oxygen. The detectors have found that there once exisited water. Due to the low gravity, the water all ran into space. The exploration of space is not only helping us know more about the unknown space, but also telling us a way to the new science and possibly a homeland. In other words, people may realize the dream of living on another planets.
Even though we knew moon well now, it has many touching legends n ancient times. Chang’e is a beauty who ate the elixir and then flew to the moon, she lived in the “Wide-Cold Palace” (Moon Palce) with a jade rabbit. Wugang always cut down the sweet-scented osmanthus trees on moon as a punishment. Though these legends are not true, we can still store them in our memories.
Why do we care so much about other planets? The reason is that the Earth is suffering many troubles. These troubles include: global warming, air pollution, water pollution, the population is quickly increasing, soil deterioration and decreasing natural resoures. The environment is not as good as it once was. All the troubles mentioned above are warnings us that we should pay more attention to the environment, and take care of our mother-Earth. Don’t make it suffer any more troubles. The reason is simple, we have only one Earth. Why not cherish it and make it more beautiful.
Even Mars is the most similar to the Earth in the solar system, scientists have said that outer-space is not fit for human beings to live in at the moment. Because there is not enough of the necessary thing that we need in space. We can’t find the basic thing-water. On other planets, so we should assume the attitude, “looking for a horse while riding a donkey, but not looking for a horse while discarding a donkey.” Only remember that we have one Earth. It is our duty to protect and cherish it.
In 1990, NASA launched a telescope called “Hubble” to the orbit of Earth. Without the affect of atmosphere, we can see the stars far away about 200 hundred million light-years. It is the farthest area we can see so far in the universe. People learnt a lot with the telescope, and NASA plans to launch a new telescope to space to take the place of “Hubble”. It is more modern. We can see longer distance with it. We hope that one day we can know all the secrets about the universe.
October 26th, 2003, in China, the “Divin Land 5” was launched to space successfully and after 21 hours it landed safty. It proved that we have the ability to conquer space. Now scientists in China have started a project to explore the moon. Soon detectors have been launched. We hope a good result. The Chinese scientists plant to launch “Divin land 6” to space next year. We hope that day can come soon.
Now, we have full confidence in ourselves. However, before we explore space, we should take care of our only homeland, Earth. So that we have the right conditions to explore space and have a good result.
What will human being’s future like? No one knows. Please remember to cherish everything we own now. Don’t be regretful for the past! Looking back at the history, and looking into the future, so we can dominate our destiny.
Distance lends enchantment to the view! All my friends, let’s make our world more beautiful!
英文读后感-A Book of All Times
A Book of All Times——Thoughts given by Sherlock Holmes and the Duke’s Son
Written in the first chapter of the book Pride and Prejudice is an extraordinary sentence of which even a person who has had only a brief look upon the book will not fail to receive a deep impression-It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. In terms of Sherlock Holmes, we’d better alter the sentence into “It is a fact universally accepted by readers throughout the world that an excellent book in possession of our famous detective Sherlock Holmes is undoubtedly a masterpiece of all times.” Perhaps this is one of the most obvious explanations for the unrivaled popularity of “Holmes series” in the field of detective stories. Overwhelmed by the recommendations provided by my friends, I decided to take a look on this Sherlock Holmes and the Duke’s Son originally published by Oxford University Press.
As a whole, this book is about a case concerning the Duke’s missing son. Arthur, the Duke’s son, was found out in a certain morning to have disappeared, accompanied with which was also the disappearance of the German teacher. The school master Dr. Huxtable then turned to the famous detective of the time Sherlock Holmes for help. Realizing how tough and important the case is, Holmes immediately made up his mind to accept the case and followed Dr. Huxtable back to Mackleton by train. Having formed a rough idea about the whole matter, Holmes probed into the case immediately and had a careful investigation of the entire area shortly after the arrival, during the process of which he discovered the body of the German teacher Heidegger. Finally, primarily due to his prominent ability as a detective, he managed to unravel the mystery and obtained the twelve thousand pounds promised by the Duke.
Having once started reading this fiction, I was completely immersed in the mysterious story presented by the book. As the saying goes, “Well begun, half done”. At the beginning of the story, just like many other detective stories, the author gives us a brief description of the condition by the words of a client. However, unlike other ones, this story first delineates the client’s strange behavior at length to indicate the severity of the incident in order to attract the readers to continue reading it. As is known to all, vivid depiction is essential to detective stories since it can help the readers understand each figure’s characteristics and visualize the scenes, thus making the story more authentic and attractive. Therefore, trying to present a “real world” to his readership, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the original “Holmes series”, has skillfully arranged the plots of the whole story from the perspective of Dr. Watson, a character not so specialized in discovering the truth hidden behind the enigmatic happenings as Holmes but so loyal to Sherlock Homes as a friend that he always accompanies Holmes wherever he goes. In this way, he elaborately depicted every scene and character in the book, Apart from the special start, the ending of the whole story, being dramatic but reasonable, is certainly an outstanding one. After all, except the author himself, who knows that the Duke’s seemingly ordinary secretary is in fact the Duke’s bastard? In addition, who knows that the Duke actually has already been acquainted with the whole thing before Holmes solves this complicated problem? Yet, surprising as it is, this ending seems so natural that it fits all the plots of the story perfectly well. While enjoying this wonderful story, I could do nothing but admire the wonderful design of this masterpiece as well as the author’s gorgeous writing skill. Closing my eyes, I can even “see” the story happening just like watching a film. Not until then did I understand why the Japanese cartoon film Detective Conan used this “Conan” as the name of its hero.
As far as I am concerned, nothing is more admirable and surprising in the hero Sherlock Homes than his profound knowledge which has certainly assisted him a lot when he was studying the case. Take the bicycle tyres for instance, Holmes actually is capable of recognizing 42 different varieties of bicycle tyres. What’s more, according to his other stories, Holmes has studied different kinds of newspapers, cigarettes, people’s footprints and other special things as well. Therefore, he seems to have the mastery of anything relevant to the cases he deals with. Except for his illimitable knowledge, Holmes also specializes in arranging the facts in order and then finding the fact leading him to a great discovery or even the truth itself. From his speaking “Every mystery has an answer”, we can readily shape the impression of a man with great intelligence and inflexible will. In this case, after getting rid of unrelated facts, Sherlock Homes eventually grasped the clue and discovered the amazing fact.
Needless to say, as a world-renowned masterpiece, Sherlock Holmes and the Duke’s Son has attracted and is still charming numerous readers from all corners of the world and people from all walks of life. The “Holmes series” has already set up a standard against which all the following detective fictions are measured. Sherlock Holmes, beyond all doubt, has become a name firmly rooted in people’s memories. Although Dr. Watson’s closing The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes in 1927 was a great pity to the readers, the discontinuance of the entire “Holmes series” may have actually added to the legendary stature of Sherlock Holmes.
From:https://www.330011.com/Article/dhq/201212/1707.html