雅思阅读练习题：Why we care so much about fictional characters

　　新东方在线雅思网为大家带来了雅思阅读练习题：Why we care so much about fictional characters。正文都做了贴心的注解，文章包含雅思词汇、例句讲解。希望以下内容能够为同学们的雅思备考提供帮助。新东方在线雅思网将第一时间为大家发布最新、最全、最专业的雅思报名官网消息和雅思考试真题及解析，供大家参考。

　　Ever cry over the death of a TV character? Here's why.

　　I admit it: I'm the sort of "Star Wars" geek(对......痴迷的人，傻子) who's intrigued(被……吸引住) by the suggestion sweeping the Internet that Jar Jar Binks might have been the secret bad guy. The theory began in a complicated Reddit post, and has since gone mainstream.

　　Why am I so intrigued? Why are fans of "Game of Thrones" so angry at the thought that Jon Snow might actually be dead? Why are fans of "The Walking Dead" beside themselves(疯狂的) over the apparent demise(死亡) two episodes back of Beloved Character Whom We Won't Spoil Things by Naming?(为什么《行尸走肉》的粉丝们会因为那些他们钟爱却被写死的角色那么疯狂--为防剧透，在这我们不说出这些角色的名字?) None of these people exist. Why, then, do we become so emotionally engaged in their fates?

　　To help answer the question, I went to Blakey Vermeule of Stanford University, a professor of English and author of the excellent monograph(专著) "Why Do We Care About Literary Characters?" There Vermeule combines cognitive theory, history, social psychology and a touch of Darwin to suggest that without fiction, we would have trouble making sense of the world. Narratives bring order to what we see around us, and characters put faces to what we learn.

　　To be sure, the stories Vermeule has in mind are mostly classic literature. Still, she was kind enough, via e-mail, to answer a few questions, and she provides a truly intriguing theory:

　　"I think this widespread fascination with fantasy shows that we do not in fact live in a secular(世俗的) age, rather we live rather amazingly in an age of shimmering(闪烁的) enchantments(迷幻), of heroes and villains(反派角色) and Gods and monsters."

　　She's noticed, in other words, that fandom's(影迷) deepest engagement seems to be with characters facing zombies and Sith Lords. She adds: "That these worlds are fictional and that we know them to be fictional is quite beside the point(无关紧要): the human brain is extremely easily fooled into believing things are true, often viscerally(发自内心地), even when we know in some rational sense that they are not."

　　Lest one think that she is here speaking only of the effect of fiction on our brains, Vermeule provides an example that should leave us uneasy: "A friend reports that he recently toured a virtual reality lab(虚拟现实实验室) at Stanford. The simulator(模拟器) made him think he was standing on a plank (木板)over a ravine(峡谷) -- nothing he could say to himself could convince him to step off the plank, even though he knew perfectly well he was standing on carpet in a lab."

　　Why does it matter what clever cognitive scientists can fool our brain into thinking? Because scientists are not the only ones who can do it: "Fiction makers have gotten astonishingly good at defeating our rational override switch(人控开关)."

　　They can pull this off, says Vermeule, because their creations "prime some deep religious intuitions and give them a habitation in a world that has grown so deeply skeptical and materialistic and wary of ideals(Vermeule说，他们能够拉下我们的理性控制开关，因为他们的创造 “可以激起深藏内心的某些宗教直觉，并帮它们在这个世界中找到栖息地，这个世界如今已变得如此不可知、如此物质化、如此不相信理想。")

　　In her book, Vermeule contends that even stories we know to be invented help fulfill a need for narrative connection that may be wired into us(在她的书中，Vemeule认为，即使我们知道那些故事是虚构的，但那些故事仍然满足了根植于我们内心对叙事联系的需求。). We can understand the world better when we can embed(嵌入) its various characteristics in a tale. But the tale, to work, has to offer personification. This was true in the days of ancient myth and is true now. It may be that our identification with the characters leads us to believe we're on the track of important truths.(也许是这样的：与人物认同让我们相信，我们正通往重要真理的路上。)

　　So in our encounters with fiction, we're nevertheless searchers. We spend emotional energy on characters because we can pursue these deep truths even if they're absent from our reality. This, says Vermeule, is a good thing: "We should absolutely delight in the power that fiction makers (in any medium) have to transport us into other worlds and involve us so mightily."

　　We should. The problem is, too often we don't absolutely delight. Instead, we absolutely lose our tempers. "Game of Thrones" fans are angry at the thought that Jon Snow might be dead, and desperate for evidence that he isn't. "Walking Dead" fans feel the same way about Beloved Character. And "Star Wars" fans -- well, that's an often eccentric(古怪的) group that cares so intensely that every line of dialogue is worth parsing(剖析) to get the answer.

　　But the furious response to storylines(故事情节) we dislike isn't new. In the 18th century, Vermeule says, the novelist Samuel Richardson was deluged with(向……涌来) letters of protest once readers realized that he "was going to allow his virtuous heroine Clarissa to die after being raped by the villain." In more recent history, she reminds us, "Sopranos(《黑道家族》) "fans have yet to forgive the show's creator, David Chase.

　　I asked Vermeule why we get so angry. Here's her answer: "Fiction rather uniquely primes our moral intuitions, our sense of right and wrong, of good and bad, of fair and not fair. When we suspect that justice is being thwarted(阻碍), we want to lodge a protest(提出抗议) -- and the protest is a deeply moral one, against the unfairness of outcomes."

　　We're so caught up in the narrative that we demand right outcomes, just as we do in life. We're not driven by affection for characters alone, but by our desperate need to see justice done ... somewhere. And, yes, we should be able to tell the difference between illusion and reality, and adjust our emotional involvement accordingly, but we can't:

　　"Again this is our emotional brain overriding our rational kill(joy) switch, appealing to the Ref(裁判) even when we know there is no Ref. All of these impulses can be seen in a pure form in children and to the extent that we have carried them into our adult lives, it is cause for celebration, to fight against what Wordsworth called the shades of the prison house that close upon the growing person."

　　Perhaps, then, we should be happy that we care so deeply. Whether we're furious about the fate of Beloved Character or demanding the truth about Jar Jar Binks, our anger about characters who don't exist isn't evidence that we're disconnected from reality. It's evidence that our moral sense is intact(完整的). In a world as complex as this one, that's surely a good thing.

　　Vocabulary

　　Intrigued:被……吸引住

　　Monograph:专著

　　Villains:反派角色

　　Fandom:影迷

　　beside the point:无关紧要

　　viscerally:发自内心地

　　virtual reality lab:虚拟现实实验室

　　simulator:模拟器

　　plank :木板

　　ravine:峡谷

　　override switch:人控开关

　　embed:嵌入

　　eccentric:古怪的

　　parse:剖析

　　be deluged with:向……涌集而来

　　thwart:阻碍

　　Ref:裁判

　　Intact:完整的,未受损的