Приступаем к изучению творчества Чарльза Диккенса. Мы начинаем читать и слушать на английском языке один из его интереснейших романов «Great Expectations» (Большие надежды). Текст аудиокниги адаптирован до уровня СРЕДНИЙ (Intermediate) и разбит на главы. К главам предлагаются задания.
Слова для изучения, а также сложные конструкции и обороты выделены.
Audiobook «Great Expectations» (читать и слушать онлайн)
Содержание
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Chapter 1 «The Man in the Churchyard» (Человек на кладбище)
Words:
- the most frightening thing — самое страшное
- wandered into the churchyard — забрел на кладбище
- wilderness — дикая местность
- marsh country — болотистая местность
- scared me half-way out of my skin — напугал до полусмерти
- seized me by the chin — схватил за подбородок
- teeth chattered- зубы стучали
- begged- умолял
- turned me upside-down — перевернул вверх ногами
- like a hungry beast — как голодный зверь
- a threatening shake- угрожающе тряхнул
Audio for Chapter One
It was, I think, the most frightening thing that ever to happened to me. . .
I am a grown man now, but I was a small boy at the time, and I can feel, even yet, the thrill of horror that ran through me on that Christmas Eve, all those years ago.
I had, for some reason, wandered into the churchyard and found my parent’s grave. It was a raw afternoon towards evening, I remember; the wind was rushing in from the sea and beyond the churchyard wall there stretched the dark flat wilderness of the marsh country, with the river winding across it. I was already a bundle of shivers, feeling lost and afraid, when a figure started up from among the gravestones and scared me half-way out of my skin.“Hold your noise! ” cried a terrible voice. “And keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat! ”
He seized me by the chin; a fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who was wet to the skin and covered in mud; who shook and shivered, and whose teeth chattered in his head as he glared into my eyes.
“Oh, don’t cut my throat, sir,” I begged, in terror. “Pray don’t do it, sir. ”
“Tell us your name! ” said the man, giving me a little shake. “Quick! ”
“Pip, sir. ”
“What? ” said the man, staring at me.
“It’s really Philip, but everyone calls me Pip. ”
“Show us where you live,” he ordered. “Point to the place. ”
I pointed to where our village lay, among the trees, a mile or more from the church.
The man looked at me for a moment, then turned me upside-down and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself again — for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me — I was seated on a tall gravestone, trembling, while he ate the bread like a hungry beast.
“You young dog! ” he said suddenly, with a threatening shake of his head. “What fat cheeks you’ve got! I’ve half a mind to eat you! ”
I hurriedly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the stone to keep myself from crying.
“Now look here,” said the man, “where’s your mother? ”
“There, sir,” said I.
He jumped, started to run away, then stopped and glared at me over his shoulder. I pointed.
“There, sir,” I explained, timidly. “She’s dead — and my father, too.”
Activities:
Загрузка ...* * *
8. Слушать аудиокнигу Great Expectations ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы первой:
- a blacksmith- кузнец
- a file — напильник
- seize — схватить
- hold (held,held) — держать
- tilt — наклонить
- swing (swang, swung) — качнуть
Audio for Chapter 1 (continuation):
Answer the questions:
- What did the man ask the boy to bring?
- Did he threaten the boy? Why?
- Who did he tell him about?
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Chapter 2 «The Morning on the Marsh» (Утро на болоте)
Words:
- force — заставлять
- must have forced — должно быть заставила (перфектный инфинитив have forced после модального глагола must переводится прошедшем временем)
- good-natured — добродушный
- sweet-tempered — приятный; с мягким, добрым характером
- demanded — потребовала
- looking angrily — сердито смотря
- drive to the churchyard — свести в могилу
- crept over — подполз (creep — ползти)
- a distant explosion — (отдаленный звук выстрела из пушки)
- a convict — заключенный
- impatiently — нетерпеливо
- was off — сбежал (be off — уходить, смываться (разг.))
- prison-ship — плавучая тюрьма на корабле
Audio for Chapter Two:
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I. She was not a good-looking woman. She was too tall and thin, and her skin was very red, and I had an idea that she must have forced Joe to marry her, in much the same way that she forced me to do a good many things I had no wish to do. Joe was a big, strong fellow, fairhaired and blue-eyed, always good-natured and sweet-tempered.
They were in the kitchen when I reached home. Mrs. Joe looked at the clock.
“Where have you been, you young monkey?” she demanded.
“To the churchyard,” I answered in a little, timid voice.
“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, looking angrily from her husband to me. “The pair of you will drive me to the churchyard one of these days!”
Joe was sitting in the chimney-corner, and I crept over and sat opposite him while my sister set the tea things. We all jumped and started as there came the sound of a distant explosion.
“Joe,” I said, “was that great guns?”
“Yes,” said Joe. “There’s another convict off.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Escaped! Escaped!” explained my sister impatiently.
“What’s a convict?” I asked Joe.
“There was one off last night,” said Joe, “after the sunset gun. And they fired warning of him. Now, it seems, they’re firing warning of another.”
“Who’s firing?” said I.
“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister. “It’s from the Hulks!”
“And please—what’s Hulks?” I asked.
“Hulks are prison-ships, right across the marshes,” said Joe.
“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?” I said, hopefully.
Activities:
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9. Слушать ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 2 (аудио, часть 2):
- rob — грабить
- steal (stole, stolen) — красть (непр.)
- unlock — отпереть
- thief — вор
Answer the questions:
- What did the boy take from the house?
- What did he feel like?
- Who did he see on his way back to the marshes?
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10. ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 2 (аудио, часть 3):
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Chapter 3 «The Hunt» (Погоня)
1. Аудиокнига «Great Expectations». Chapter 3 (audio, part 1):
2. Chapter 3 (audio, part 2):
3. Chapter 3 (audio, part 3):
4. Chapter 3 (audio, part 4):
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Chapter 4 «Miss Havisham» (Мисс Хавишем)
Audio for Chapter 4:
Time went by, and I thought less and less of my friend, the convict, as the months passed and we heard no more of him. Then there happened something which drove him quite out of my mind for a long time to come….
It was on a market-day it happened. My sister, as was sometimes her habit, had driven into town with Uncle Pumblechook to assist him in buying such stuffs and goods as required a woman’s judgment. They were late coming back to the forge. It was dark before we heard the sound of iron shoes upon the road, and the two of them drove up, wrapped to the eyes. We were soon all in the kitchen, and my sister began unwrapping herself in great haste and excitement.
“Now,” she said, fixing her eyes on me, “if this boy isn’t grateful this night, he never will be!”“Why?” asked Joe, a puzzled look on his face.
“Because,” said my sister, “Miss Havisham up town wants this boy to go to her house and play there. And of course he’s going. And he had better play there,” she added, “or I’ll give him something to remember!”
I had heard of Miss Havisham up town— everybody for miles around had heard of Miss Havisham up town—as a wonderfully rich old lady who lived in a large and dismal house that was barred like a prison, and in which she had shut herself away from the world.
“Well, to be sure!” cried Joe, astonished. “I wonder how she comes to know Pip?”
“Stupid!” answered my sister. “Who said she knew him? Uncle Pumblechook has to go there sometimes to pay his rent, and she asked him if he knew of a boy to go and play there. He, being a sensible man, unlike some, mentioned this boy here—whose fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s. Uncle has offered to take him into town tonight and then to Miss Havisham’s in the morning. And here I stand talking, with Uncle waiting, and this boy thick with dirt from head to foot!”
With that, she sprang upon me, and my face was put under the tap, and I was soaped and scrubbed and rubbed with towels until I was quite beside myself. When that was done, I was put into my best and tightest suit, delivered over to Uncle Pumblechook, and driven off to town without any idea why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what on earth I was expected to play at.
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Cлушать аудиокнигу ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 4 (аудио, часть 2):
At ten o’clock next morning, Uncle Pumblechook and I stood before the gate of Miss Havisham’s house. The gate was locked, so we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until someone should come and open it. While we waited, I looked through the bars of the gate and saw that the house was of old brick, and dismal, and all the windows had bars to them. There was a big yard in front, and I saw a young lady coming across it, with keys in her hand.
“This,” Mr. Pumblechook told her, when she had opened the gate, “is Pip.”
“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty, and seemed very proud. “Come in, Pip.”
Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, but she stopped him with the gate.
“It’s only the boy Miss Havisham wishes to see,” she told him coolly, and shut and locked the gate in his face. “Hurry, boy,” she said then, and we left him standing there with his mouth hanging open.
Though she called me “boy”, she was only about my age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and very beautiful and confident; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.
We went into the house by a side door and the first thing I noticed was that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning. She took it up, and we went up a staircase and along more passages, and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.
At last we came to the door of a room, and she said: “Go in.”
I answered: “After you, Miss.”
“Don’t be stupid, boy,” she answered me. “I am not going in.” And she scornfully walked away and, what was worse, took the candle with her.
I was more than half afraid at being left there. However, I knocked at the door, and a voice called to me to enter. I went in, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. In an arm-chair, with her head leaning on one hand, sat the
strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.She was dressed in rich materials, all of white. Her shoes were white, and she had a long white veil hanging from her hair, and she had a bride’s flower in her hair, and her hair was white also. Bright jewels sparkled from her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses and halfpacked travelling-boxes lay all about the floor.
Then I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and was now faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the fine dress had no brightness left but the brightness of her eyes. I saw that the dress had been made for the figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose was little more than skin and bone. She was like a skeleton that had dark eyes that were alive and looked at me. I almost cried out aloud, but I think I was too frightened to do so.
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ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 4 (аудио, часть 3):
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Pip, ma’am,” I answered. “Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come—to play.”
“Let me look at you. Come close.”
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I saw that the only clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that her watch also had stopped at the same time.
“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham suddenly, and laid her hands, one upon the other, on her left side. “Do you know what I touch here?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am: your heart.”
“Broken!” she cried, with a strange smile that had a kind of boast in it. Then the smile faded. “I am tired,” she said heavily, “and I have done with men and women. I have a sick fancy that I want to see someone play. Play, boy! Play!” She moved her fingers impatiently. “Play, play, play!”
I had no idea what to do. I just stood there looking at her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked sharply.
“Ma’am,” I said, in a kind of despair, “I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just now. It’s so new here, and so strange—”
I broke off and we took another long look at each other.
“So new to him,” she said softly, “and so old to me! Call Estella. You can do that. Call Estella—at the door.”
To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage like a strange house calling “Estella” to the scornful young lady, was
almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last, and her light came flickering along the dark passage like a star.Miss Havisham called her close. She took up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect against the girl’s pretty brown hair. “Let me see you play cards with this boy,” she said.
“With this common boy?” asked Estella, turning up her nose.
I thought I heard Miss Havisham answer—only it seemed so unlikely—“Well, you can break his heart.”
Estella laughed, and we sat down to cards.
“What coarse hands this boy has!” said Estella before our first game was done. “And what thick boots!”
I had never been ashamed of my hands or boots before, but I was from that moment on. She won the game, and I dealt the cards again. I made mistakes, as was only natural when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong. She called me a stupid, common boy.
“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham, as she looked on. “What do you think of her?”
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ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 4 (аудио, часть 4):
“I don’t like to say,” I replied, going red in the face.
“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, leaning close.
“I think she is very proud,” I said in a whisper.
“Anything else?”
“I think she is very pretty.”
“Anything else?”
“I think she is most insulting.”
Estella gave a laugh at this.
“Anything else?”
“Yes—I should like to go home now.”
“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”
“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I want to go home now.”
“You shall go soon,” Miss Havisham told me. “Finish the game first.”
I played the game to an end and Estella beat me once more. She threw the cards down on the table as if she despised them for having been won of me.
“When shall I have you here again?” Miss Havisham said. “Let me think. I know nothing of the days of the week. Come again after six days. You hear, boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Estella, take him down. Go, Pip.”
I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up. The rush of the daylight quite confused me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange room for many hours. Estella unlocked the gate and stood aside to let me through. She smiled at me then, as if she was glad that my hands were so coarse and my boots so thick. I was going out without looking at her, when she touched me with her hand.
“Why don’t you cry?” she said.
“Because I don’t want to.”
“You do,” said she. “You’re crying now.” It was true.
She laughed again, pushed me out, and kicked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was much relieved to find him not at home. I set off on the four-mile walk to our village, thinking of all I had seen and filled with a deep regret that I was such a common, stupid boy, with coarse hands and thick boots. It seemed to me that I was in a thoroughly bad way!
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Chapter Five «A Fight and a Kiss» (Драка и поцелуй)
Words:
- treated me as if I were — обращалась со мной как будто бы я был
- behave yourself — веди себя хорошо
- I was quite willing to work — я не прочь поработать
- I made out — я понял
Audio for Сhapter 5:
I went to Miss Havisham’s often after that; and always Estella treated me as if I were no more than a dog in disgrace; and always, for some reason, I longed to win her favour.
Then there came a day, when, as she and I were on our way upstairs, we met a gentleman coming down.
“What have we here?” asked the gentleman, stopping and looking down at me.
“A boy,” replied Estella.
He was a big man, with an exceedingly large head that was bald on the top. He took my chin in his hand and turned up my face to have a look at me in the candlelight. His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were sharp and suspicious, and he had thick black eyebrows that wouldn’t lie down.
“Boy of the neighbourhood, eh?” he said. “How do you come here?
“Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I answered.“Well, behave yourself!” he said. “Do you mind me? Behave yourself!”
With these words, he went on down the stairs. There was not much time to consider what the man had been doing there, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room.
“Are you ready to play?” she asked me. “Or would you rather work?”
I said I was quite willing to work, and she took up a stick and came and laid her hand on my shoulder. “Take me into the room opposite,” she said.I entered the room she had pointed out. The windows were bricked up so that the daylight could not enter, but there were candles here and there faintly lighting the room. It was a big room and in the centre was a long table with a cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. A great centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth, so overhung with cobwebs that I could not make out what it was, but I could see spiders running home to it, and others running out from it.
“This,” said Miss Havisham, pointing at the table with her stick, “is where I shall be laid when I am dead. What do you think that is?” Again pointing with her stick, “ that—where the cobwebs are?”
“I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”
“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine.”
She glared all round the room, and then said, leaning upon my shoulder: “Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me!”
I made out from this that the work I had to do was to walk Miss Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once, and away we went, round and round and round. After a while she said, “Call Estella.” When Estella came, she said: “Take Pip down to the garden, Estella. Give him something to eat and let him wander and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.”
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ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 5 (аудио, часть 2):
Words:
- neglected garden — заброшенный сад
- I was so astonished — я был так удивлен
- had a bad fall — упал и сильно ударился
- The same to you. — И вам того же.
- was worth nothing at all — ничего не стоило
Audio for Chapter 5 (continuation):
Estella took me down to the yard, left me waiting, and returned with some bread and meat, which she handed to me without looking at me, and left me. I wandered round the corner of the yard, and into a neglected garden, like a wilderness. Then, never doubting that the house was empty, I stared in at a window and found myself, to my great surprise, looking into the face of a boy with light hair.
This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and came out of a door close by.
“Who let you in?” he asked.
“Miss Estella.”
“Who gave you leave to wander about?”
“Miss Estella.”
“Come and fight,” said the pale young gentleman.
I was so astonished that I followed him to a quiet corner of the garden. There he pulled off not only his jacket, but his shirt too, in a most businesslike and bloodthirsty manner. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and my heart failed me when he came dancing at me with his hands up. I have never been so surprised in my life as I was when I hit out at him and saw him lying on his back, looking up at me with the blood pouring from his nose.
But he was on his feet at once and came at me again. The second greatest surprise I have ever had was seeing him on his back again, looking up at me out of a black eye.
So it went on. He seemed to have no strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to say that the more I hit him the harder I hit him; but he came up again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with
“All right,” he said, when he had got his breath back. “You’ve won!”
“Are you all right? Can I help you?” I asked anxiously.
“No, thank you,” he replied.
“Good afternoon, then,” I said, turning away.
“The same to you,” he answered as I walked off.
When I got back to the yard I found Estella waiting with the keys. She looked very pleased about something. Instead of going straight to the gate, she stepped back into the passage and pulled me in after her.
“Come here! You may kiss me if you like.”
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek; but I felt that the kiss was given to the stupid, common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing at all.
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ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ главы 5 (аудио, часть 3):
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