【英语语言学习】矿井下的危险

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In his latest book, "Deep Down Dark," novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar recounts the full story of a disaster that many of us know only the ending of. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, has a review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE¹: The disaster began on a day shift around lunchtime at a mine in Chile's Atacama Desert. Miners working deep inside a mountain, excavating² for copper³, gold and other minerals, started feeling vibrations⁴. Suddenly, there was a massive explosion, and the passageways of the mine filled up with a gritty dust cloud. When the dust settled, the men discovered the source of the explosion, a single block of stone as tall as a 45-story building had broken off from the rest of the mountain and had fallen through the layers of the mine, causing a chain reaction as the mountain above it began collapsing⁵ too. Thirty-three miners were sealed inside the mountain by this mega block of stone, some 770,000 tons of it, twice the weight of the Empire State Building.

Staring at that smooth wall, Luis Urzua, the crew's supervisor⁶, thought it was like the stone they put over Jesus's tomb. If the beginning of this horror tale seems the stuff of legend or nightmare, the conclusion is reassuringly⁷ familiar because some 1 billion of us viewers around the world watched it unfold on live TV. On October 13, 2010, all 33 of those Chilean miners, trapped for 69 days inside the San Jose Mine, were raised to the surface of the earth, resurrected through a newly-drilled escape tunnel into which a capsule was slowly lowered and raised by a giant crane. It was a feat⁸ of engineering and a triumph of faith. Neither the miners, buried under half a mile of rock, nor their families, above ground in a makeshift tent-city called Campo Esperanza, Camp Hope, ever completely succumbed⁹ to despair despite the fact that for 17 days, before a drill finally broke through to the refuge, the room where the men were gathered, no one knew whether they were alive or not.

Before they left the refuge, all 33 men recognized that their story was their most precious possession and agreed to share the proceeds of any book or movie made about them. The movie, starring Antonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche, is in the works. The book has just come out. It's called, "Deep Down Dark," and it's written by Hector Tobar. As real life, extreme adventure tales go, this one is a doozy - the equal, if the geographical¹⁰ inverse¹¹, of "Into Thin Air," Jon Krakauer's 1999 blockbuster about the Mount Everest climbing disaster. Tobar had exclusive access to the miners. And while that kind of snug¹² situation inevitably¹³ places some constraints¹⁴ on a storyteller, Tobar complicates¹⁵ the purely¹⁶ uplifting version of the men's ordeal¹⁷, describing occasional resentments¹⁸ and petty thievery. Nonetheless, the most inspiring aspect of the miners' behavior was their almost immediate¹⁹ decision to act in solidarity²⁰. On the first day of their entombment, supervisor Urzua took off his distinctive²¹, white helmet and announced to his workers, we are all equal now; there are no bosses and employees.

Some of the miners regarded Urzua's act as an abdication²² of responsibility. Others saw it as a crucial factor that inspired their collective behavior and survival. The men organized themselves into work shifts, participated in daily prayer sessions and rationed²³ their emergency food supply into one meal a day of two cookies and a spoonful of tuna fish, augmented²⁴ by water drained from industrial waste containers. Above ground, the mostly female crowd of the miners' families acted collectively too, banging pots and pans to get attention and shouting, we want information, in police officers' faces. Tobar occasionally inserts poetic²⁵ commentary into this narrative²⁶, such as when he says of the first moments of the miners' entombment that the outside has slipped into the was because now the men live in a present, and perhaps a forever, of darkness. Mostly, though, Tobar wisely sticks to the journalistic method of marshaling as many details of the claustrophobic horror as he can to make the mine and the men's ordeal vivid to the reader. He succeeds. You're made of sterner stuff than I am if, as a reader, you can keep from tearing up at that glorious moment on day 17 when engineers on the surface draw up that rescue drill and discover a note tied to the bit that reads, we are well in the refuge, signed, The 33.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University and is the author of the new book, "So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be And Why It Endures." She reviewed "Deep Down Dark," by Hector Tobar.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 excavating   

v.挖掘( excavate的现在分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘

参考例句：

• A bulldozer was employed for excavating the foundations of the building. 推土机用来给楼房挖地基。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A new Danish expedition is again excavating the site in annual summer digs. 一支新的丹麦探险队又在那个遗址上进行一年一度的夏季挖掘。 来自辞典例句

3 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

4 vibrations   

n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动

参考例句：

• We could feel the vibrations from the trucks passing outside. 我们可以感到外面卡车经过时的颤动。
• I am drawn to that girl; I get good vibrations from her. 我被那女孩吸引住了，她使我产生良好的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 collapsing   

压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂

参考例句：

• Rescuers used props to stop the roof of the tunnel collapsing. 救援人员用支柱防止隧道顶塌陷。
• The rocks were folded by collapsing into the center of the trough. 岩石由于坍陷进入凹槽的中心而发生褶皱。

6 supervisor   

n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师

参考例句：

• Between you and me I think that new supervisor is a twit.我们私下说，我认为新来的主管人是一个傻瓜。
• He said I was too flighty to be a good supervisor.他说我太轻浮不能成为一名好的管理员。

7 reassuringly   

ad.安心，可靠

参考例句：

• He patted her knee reassuringly. 他轻拍她的膝盖让她放心。
• The doctor smiled reassuringly. 医生笑了笑，让人心里很踏实。

8 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

9 succumbed   

不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死

参考例句：

• The town succumbed after a short siege. 该城被围困不久即告失守。
• After an artillery bombardment lasting several days the town finally succumbed. 在持续炮轰数日后，该城终于屈服了。

10 geographical   

adj.地理的；地区(性)的

参考例句：

• The current survey will have a wider geographical spread.当前的调查将在更广泛的地域范围內进行。
• These birds have a wide geographical distribution.这些鸟的地理分布很广。

11 inverse   

adj.相反的，倒转的，反转的；n.相反之物；v.倒转

参考例句：

• Evil is the inverse of good.恶是善的反面。
• When the direct approach failed he tried the inverse.当直接方法失败时，他尝试相反的做法。

12 snug   

adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房

参考例句：

• He showed us into a snug little sitting room.他领我们走进了一间温暖而舒适的小客厅。
• She had a small but snug home.她有个小小的但很舒适的家。

13 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

14 constraints   

强制( constraint的名词复数 )； 限制； 约束

参考例句：

• Data and constraints can easily be changed to test theories. 信息库中的数据和限制条件可以轻易地改变以检验假设。 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史
• What are the constraints that each of these imply for any design? 这每种产品的要求和约束对于设计意味着什么？ 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

15 complicates   

使复杂化( complicate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• What complicates the issue is the burden of history. 历史的重负使问题复杂化了。
• Russia as a great and ambitious power gravely complicates the situation. 俄国作为一个强大而有野心的国家，使得局势异常复杂。

16 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

17 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

18 resentments   

（因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He could never transcend his resentments and his complexes. 他从来不能把他的怨恨和感情上的症结置之度外。
• These local resentments burst into open revolt. 地方性反感变成公开暴动。

19 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

20 solidarity   

n.团结；休戚相关

参考例句：

• They must preserve their solidarity.他们必须维护他们的团结。
• The solidarity among China's various nationalities is as firm as a rock.中国各族人民之间的团结坚如磐石。

21 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。

22 abdication   

n.辞职；退位

参考例句：

• The officers took over and forced his abdication in 1947.1947年军官们接管了政权并迫使他退了位。
• Abdication is precluded by the lack of a possible successor.因为没有可能的继承人，让位无法实现。

23 rationed   

限量供应，配给供应( ration的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• We were rationed to two eggs a day. 每天配给我们两个鸡蛋。
• The army is well rationed. 部队给养良好。

24 Augmented   

adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• 'scientists won't be replaced," he claims, "but they will be augmented." 他宣称：“科学家不会被取代；相反，他们会被拓展。” 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史
• The impact of the report was augmented by its timing. 由于发表的时间选得好，这篇报导的影响更大了。

25 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

26 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。