Farewell to Arms. 4: English Learning Reader

Author: Wang Ruoping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: This series of readers is written by American authors and composed of 3,300 of the most commonly used words. The language is modern, authentic, and standard. It's pure and easy to understand. You can enjoy learning English without looking up a dictionary while lying in bed. The novels feature people, their eating, drinking, sleeping, and daily activities, as well as their emotions, desires, and complex relationships with others, along with conflicts and harmonies between people and nature or society. From the perspective of language acquisition, this series achieves the goal of using 3,300 basic words to meticulously describe and explain the details of life and the rich inner world of people. By immersing yourself in an English novel, you are essentially living in an "English world," which is the best way for Chinese learners to overcome the lack of an English-speaking environment. Simply reading a few textbooks to learn English is unrealistic. This series selects 50 outstanding literary works from abroad that are worth reading in a lifetime. Reading these works not only helps you master English but also accumulates Western culture and enhances your personal taste and refinement. This series truly helps you achieve a lifestyle of learning English! You can read 20 books in a year, 40 books in two years. After reading 40 books, it's equivalent to living in an English environment for two years, which will definitely enable you to develop strong English proficiency. Remember, without millions of words of English input, it's impossible to learn English well. Ernest Hemingway was one of the 20th-century American literary masters who achieved success through self-taught. His paternal uncle, Weloopy, came to Shanxi Province in China a century ago to preach and practice medicine, and he founded Xuefu Mingxian College, which produced many talents for our country. The plot of this 250,000-word novel is not complicated. The American youth Henry voluntarily went to the front lines of the Italo-Austrian battlefield as an ambulance driver during the war against Germany and Austria, where he met and fell in love with a beautiful British nurse, Miss Catherine Barkley. While Henry was recovering from his injuries in the hospital, he received Catherine's pure and devoted care; she gave everything, bringing happiness to Henry on his sickbed. After recovering, Henry returned to the front lines at a time when the Italian army was in complete disarray, with chaos both on the front and behind. The Italian military police, acting like fools and demons, identified friends as enemies, disregarded human life, and were ready to execute Henry on the spot as an enemy spy! At the brink of life and death, Henry escaped by jumping into a river. In the turbulent current, he survived by the skin of his teeth. In the end, he returned to Catherine's side. To avoid being chased by the police, Henry and Catherine fled to Switzerland by boat in the dead of night, amidst wind and rain, and lived a happy life for a few months. Their happiness was as fleeting as a shooting star or a ground-level lotus flower—it was too short-lived; Catherine and her child both died in childbirth. Henry was heartbroken and felt utterly hopeless. The theme of this book is: unjust war destroys all the good people and things in the world. This book is one of the excellent teaching materials for Chinese students to understand history, learn English, get close to literary masters, and climb the peak of literature.