中英原文 林中之死

代表作

3

：林中之死

1)

简介

Death in the Woods is a short story written by Sherwood Anderson first

published in 1924 and reprinted in 1933. As one of the most influential

American writers, Anderson is famous for his short story collections, and

was a major proponent in the revitalization of the American idiom in

fiction. Death in the Woods is considered one of Anderson's most

distinctive stories, displaying many of the ingenious narrative strategies

Anderson cultivated in his short prose.

Death in the Woods is presented as a first-person narrative by an

unreliable narrator, who tells the story of an old woman, Mrs. Grimes. It

was a flashback narrative. The boy who told the story gathered all the

facts he could from the time he witnessed the death of the old woman

when he was a young boy up to the time when he grew up as a man and

understood the real point of the story. Mrs. Grimes lives on the edge of

society and survives by selling eggs and using the proceeds to buy food

for herself, her small family and the animals in her care. Her husband is

considered to be a horse thief, and the couple is looked down on by others.

She was abandoned by her mother and grew up as an indentured servant

and received inappropriate attentions from her German master. Jake

Grimes, who helps her get rid of her German master and his wife became

her husband. However, marriage is not the end of her miserable life but

the beginning of more torturous oppression. Mrs. Grimes and Jake Grime

have a son and a daughter, but the daughter died in childhood. Their son

grows up to be like his father. Both of them verbally abused Mrs. Grimes

and treated her in a manner similar to the way the German and his wife

had treated her. On the last day of her life, Mrs. Grimes walks into town

to trade some eggs and buy some supplies. On her way home, she leaves

the road and walks through the woods. On this shortcut she finds a place

where she sits down to have a rest. While sitting down, she dies. The

narration of the story was divided into five parts. The first part talks about

the old woman who used to visit the town to get the food she needs in

exchange for the chicken eggs she brings. It tells about her experience in

great distress and painful story before she gets married. The second part

talks about the old w

oman’s miserable life after getting married. The third

part, the main part of the whole story, talks about the death of the old

woman in woods. The forth part is about the response of other people for

the old woman’s death after her corpse was founded. The

last part is

about the narrator’s own idea for the eve

nt.

2)

英文原文

She was an old woman and lived on a farm near the town in which I

lived. All country and small- town people have seen such old women, but

no one knows much about them. Such an old woman comes into town

driving an old worn-out horse or she comes afoot carrying a basket. She

may own a few hens and have eggs to sell. She brings them in a basket

and takes them to a grocer. There she trades them in. She gets some salt

pork and some beans. Then she gets a pound or two of sugar and some

flour.

Afterwards she goes to the butcher's and asks for some dog-meat. She

may spend ten or fifteen cents, but when she does she asks for something.

Formerly the butchers gave liver to any one who wanted to carry it away.

In our family we were always having it. Once one of my brothers got a

whole cow's liver at the slaughter- house near the fairgrounds in our town.

We had it until we were sick of it. It never cost a cent. I have hated the

thought of it ever since.

The old farm woman got some liver and a soup-bone. She never visited

with any one, and as soon as she got what she wanted she lit out for home.

It made quite a load for such an old body. No one gave her a lift. People

drive right down a road and never notice an old woman like that.

There was such an old woman who used to come into town past our

house one Summer and Fall when I was a young boy and was sick with

what was called inflammatory rheumatism. She went home later carrying

a heavy pack on her back. Two or three large gaunt-looking dogs

followed at her heels.

The old woman was nothing special. She was one of the nameless ones

that hardly any one knows, but she got into my thoughts. I have just

suddenly now, after all these years, remembered her and what happened.

It is a story. Her name was Grimes, and she lived with her husband and

son in a small unpainted house on the bank of a small creek four miles

from town.

The husband and son were a tough lot. Although the son was but

twenty- one, he had already served a term in jail. It was whispered about

that the woman's husband stole horses and ran them off to some other

county. Now and then, when a horse turned up missing, the man had also

disappeared. No one ever caught him. Once, when I was loafing at Tom

Whitehead's livery-barn, the man came there and sat on the bench in front.

Two or three other men were there, but no one spoke to him. He sat for a

few minutes and then got up and went away. When he was leaving he

turned around and stared at the men. There was a look of defiance in his

eyes.

been so wherever I have gone in this town. If, some day, one of your fine

horses turns up missing, well, then what?

actually.

said. I remember how the look in his eyes made me shiver.

The old man belonged to a family that had had money once. His name

was Jake Grimes. It all comes back clearly now. His father, John Grimes,

had owned a sawmill when the country was new, and had made money.

Then he got to drinking and running after women. When he died there

wasn't much left.

Jake blew in the rest. Pretty soon there wasn't any more lumber to cut

and his land was nearly all gone.

He got his wife off a German farmer, for whom he went to work one June

day in the wheat harvest. She was a young thing then and scared to death.

You see, the farmer was up to something with the girl--she was, I think, a

bound girl and his wife had her suspicions. She took it out on the girl

when the man wasn't around. Then, when the wife had to go off to town

for supplies, the farmer got after her. She told young Jake that nothing

really ever happened, but he didn't know whether to believe it or not.

He got her pretty easy himself, the first time he was out with her. He

wouldn't have married her if the German farmer hadn't tried to tell him

where to get off. He got her to go riding with him in his buggy one night

when he was threshing on the place, and then he came for her the next

Sunday night.

She managed to get out of the house without her employer's seeing, but

when she was getting into the buggy he showed up. It was almost dark,

and he just popped up suddenly at the horse's head. He grabbed the horse

by the bridle and Jake got out his buggy-whip.

They had it out all right! The German was a tough one. Maybe he didn't

care whether his wife knew or not. Jake hit him over the face and

shoulders with the buggy-whip, but the horse got to acting up and he had

to get out.

Then the two men went for it. The girl didn't see it. The horse started to

run away and went nearly a mile down the road before the girl got him

stopped. Then she managed to tie him to a tree beside the road. (I wonder

how I know all this. It must have stuck in my mind from small-town tales

when I was a boy.) Jake found her there after he got through with the

German. She was huddled up in the buggy seat, crying, scared to death.

She told Jake a lot of stuff, how the German had tried to get her, how he

chased her once into the barn, how another time, when they happened to

be alone in the house together, he tore her dress open clear down the front.

The German, she said, might have got her that time if he hadn't heard his

old woman drive in at the gate. She had been off to town for supplies.

Well, she would be putting the horse in the barn. The German managed to

sneak off to the fields without his wife seeing. He told the girl he would

kill her if she told. What could she do? She told a lie about ripping her

dress in the barn when she was feeding the stock. I remember now that

she was a bound girl and did not know where her father and mother were.

Maybe she did not have any father. You know what I mean.

Such bound children were often enough cruelly treated. They were

children who had no parents, slaves really. There were very few orphan

homes then. They were legally bound into some home. It was a matter of

pure luck how it came out.

II

She married Jake and had a son and daughter, but the daughter died.

Then she settled down to feed stock. That was her job. At the German's

place she had cooked the food for the German and his wife. The wife was

a strong woman with big hips and worked most of the time in the fields

with her husband. She fed them and fed the cows in the barn, fed the pigs,

the horses and the chickens. Every moment of every day, as a young girl,

was spent feeding something.

Then she married Jake Grimes and he had to be fed. She was a slight

thing, and when she had been married for three or four years, and after

the two children were born, her slender shoulders became stooped.

Jake always had a lot of big dogs around the house, that stood near the

unused sawmill near the creek. He was always trading horses when he

wasn't stealing something and had a lot of poor bony ones about. Also he

kept three or four pigs and a cow. They were all pastured in the few acres

left of the Grimes place and Jake did little enough work.

He went into debt for a threshing outfit and ran it for several years, but it

did not pay. People did not trust him. They were afraid he would steal the

grain at night. He had to go a long way off to get work and it cost too

much to get there. In the Winter he hunted and cut a little firewood, to be

sold in some nearby town. When the son grew up he was just like the

father. They got drunk together. If there wasn't anything to eat in the

house when they came home the old man gave his old woman a cut over

the head. She had a few chickens of her own and had to kill one of them

in a hurry. When they were all killed she wouldn't have any eggs to sell

when she went to town, and then what would she do?

She had to scheme all her life about getting things fed, getting the pigs

fed so they would grow fat and could be butchered in the Fall. When they

were butchered her husband took most of the meat off to town and sold it.

If he did not do it first the boy did. They fought sometimes and when they

fought the old woman stood aside trembling.

She had got the habit of silence anyway--that was fixed. Sometimes,

when she began to look old--she wasn't forty yet--and when the husband

and son were both off, trading horses or drinking or hunting or stealing,

she went around the house and the barnyard muttering to herself.

How was she going to get everything fed?--that was her problem. The

dogs had to be fed. There wasn't enough hay in the barn for the horses

and the cow. If she didn't feed the chickens how could they lay eggs?

Without eggs to sell how could she get things in town, things she had to

have to keep the life of the farm going? Thank heaven, she did not have

to feed her husband-- in a certain way. That hadn't lasted long after their

marriage and after the babies came. Where he went on his long trips she

did not know. Sometimes he was gone from home for weeks, and after

the boy grew up they went off together.

They left everything at home for her to manage and she had no money.

She knew no one. No one ever talked to her in town. When it was Winter

she had to gather sticks of wood for her fire, had to try to keep the stock

fed with very little grain.

The stock in the barn cried to her hungrily, the dogs followed her about.

In the Winter the hens laid few enough eggs. They huddled in the corners

of the barn and she kept watching them. If a hen lays an egg in the barn in

the Winter and you do not find it, it freezes and breaks.

One day in Winter the old woman went off to town with a few eggs

and the dogs followed her. She did not get started until nearly three

o'clock and the snow was heavy. She hadn't been feeling very well for

several days and so she went muttering along, scantily clad, her shoulders

stooped. She had an old grain bag in which she carried her eggs, tucked

away down in the bottom. There weren't many of them, but in Winter the

price of eggs is up. She would get a little meat in exchange for the eggs,

some salt pork, a little sugar, and some coffee perhaps. It might be the

butcher would give her a piece of liver.

When she had got to town and was trading in her eggs the dogs lay by

the door outside. She did pretty well, got the things she needed, more than

she had hoped. Then she went to the butcher and he gave her some liver

and some dog-meat.

It was the first time any one had spoken to her in a friendly way for a

long time. The butcher was alone in his shop when she came in and was

annoyed by the thought of such a sick-looking old woman out on such a

day. It was bitter cold and the snow, that had let up during the afternoon,

was falling again. The butcher said something about her husband and her

son, swore at them, and the old woman stared at him, a look of mild

surprise in her eyes as he talked. He said that if either the husband or the

son were going to get any of the liver or the heavy bones with scraps of

meat hanging to them that he had put into the grain bag, he'd see him

starve first.

Starve, eh? Well, things had to be fed. Men had to be fed, and the

horses that weren't any good but maybe could be traded off, and the poor

thin cow that hadn't given any milk for three months.

Horses, cows, pigs, dogs, men.

III

The old woman had to get back before darkness came if she could. The

dogs followed at her heels, sniffing at the heavy grain bag she had

fastened on her back. When she got to the edge of town she stopped by a

fence and tied the bag on her back with a piece of rope she had carried in

her dress-pocket for just that purpose. That was an easier way to carry it.

Her arms ached. It was hard when she had to crawl over fences and once

she fell over and landed in the snow. The dogs went frisking about. She

had to struggle to get to her feet again, but she made it. The point of

climbing over the fences was that there was a short cut over a hill and

through a woods. She might have gone around by the road, but it was a

mile farther that way. She was afraid she couldn't make it. And then,

besides, the stock had to be fed. There was a little hay left and a little corn.

Perhaps her husband and son would bring some home when they came.

They had driven off in the only buggy the Grimes family had, a rickety

thing, a rickety horse hitched to the buggy, two other rickety horses led

by halters. They were going to trade horses, get a little money if they

could. They might come home drunk. It would be well to have something

in the house when they came back.

The son had an affair on with a woman at the county seat, fifteen miles

away. She was a rough enough woman, a tough one. Once, in the Summer,

the son had brought her to the house. Both she and the son had been

drinking. Jake Grimes was away and the son and his woman ordered the

old woman about like a servant. She didn't mind much; she was used to it.

Whatever happened she never said anything. That was her way of getting

along. She had managed that way when she was a young girl at the

German's and ever since she had married Jake. That time her son brought

his woman to the house they stayed all night, sleeping together just as

though they were married. It hadn't shocked the old woman, not much.

She had got past being shocked early in life.

With the pack on her back she went painfully along across an open

field, wading in the deep snow, and got into the woods.

There was a path, but it was hard to follow. Just beyond the top of the hill,

where the woods was thickest, there was a small clearing. Had some one

once thought of building a house there? The clearing was as large as a

building lot in town, large enough for a house and a garden. The path ran

along the side of the clearing, and when she got there the old woman sat

down to rest at the foot of a tree.

It was a foolish thing to do. When she got herself placed, the pack

against the tree's trunk, it was nice, but what about getting up again? She

worried about that for a moment and then quietly closed her eyes.

She must have slept for a time. When you are about so cold you can't get

any colder. The afternoon grew a little warmer and the snow came thicker

than ever. Then after a time the weather cleared. The moon even came

out.

There were four Grimes dogs that had followed Mrs. Grimes into town,

all tall gaunt fellows. Such men as Jake Grimes and his son always keep

just such dogs. They kick and abuse them, but they stay. The Grimes dogs,

in order to keep from starving, had to do a lot of foraging for themselves,

and they had been at it while the old woman slept with her back to the

tree at the side of the clearing. They had been chasing rabbits in the

woods and in adjoining fields and in their ranging had picked up three

other farm dogs.

After a time all the dogs came back to the clearing. They were excited

about something. Such nights, cold and clear and with a moon, do things

to dogs. It may be that some old instinct, come down from the time when

they were wolves and ranged the woods in packs on Winter nights, comes

back into them.

The dogs in the clearing, before the old woman, had caught two or

three rabbits and their immediate hunger had been satisfied. They began

to play, running in circles in the clearing. Round and round they ran, each

dog's nose at the tail of the next dog. In the clearing, under the

snow-laden trees and under the wintry moon they made a strange picture,

running thus silently, in a circle their running had beaten in the soft snow.

The dogs made no sound. They ran around and around in the circle.

It may have been that the old woman saw them doing that before she died.

She may have awakened once or twice and looked at the strange sight

with dim old eyes.

She wouldn't be very cold now, just drowsy. Life hangs on a long time.

Perhaps the old woman was out of her head. She may have dreamed of

her girlhood, at the German's, and before that, when she was a child and

before her mother lit out and left her.

Her dreams couldn't have been very pleasant. Not many pleasant things

had happened to her. Now and then one of the Grimes dogs left the

running circle and came to stand before her. The dog thrust his face close

to her face. His red tongue was hanging out.

The running of the dogs may have been a kind of death ceremony. It

may have been that the primitive instinct of the wolf, having been

aroused in the dogs by the night and the running, made them somehow

afraid.

Keep alive, man! When man dies we becomes wolves again.

When one of the dogs came to where the old woman sat with her back

against the tree and thrust his nose close to her face he seemed satisfied

and went back to run with the pack. All the Grimes dogs did it at some

time during the evening, before she died. I knew all about it afterward,

when I grew to be a man, because once in a woods in Illinois, on another

Winter night, I saw a pack of dogs act just like that. The dogs were

waiting for me to die as they had waited for the old woman that night

when I was a child, but when it happened to me I was a young man and

had no intention whatever of dying.

The old woman died softly and quietly. When she was dead and when

one of the Grimes dogs had come to her and had found her dead all the

dogs stopped running.

They gathered about her.

Well, she was dead now. She had fed the Grimes dogs when she was

alive, what about now?

There was the pack on her back, the grain bag containing the piece of

salt pork, the liver the butcher had given her, the dog-meat, the soup

bones. The butcher in town, having been suddenly overcome with a

feeling of pity, had loaded her grain bag heavily. It had been a big haul

for the old woman.

It was a big haul for the dogs now.

IV

One of the Grimes dogs sprang suddenly out from among the others

and began worrying the pack on the old woman's back. Had the dogs

really been wolves that one would have been the leader of the pack. What

he did, all the others did.

All of them sank their teeth into the grain bag the old woman had

fastened with ropes to her back.

They dragged the old woman's body out into the open clearing. The

worn-out dress was quickly torn from her shoulders. When she was found,

a day or two later, the dress had been torn from her body clear to the hips,

but the dogs had not touched her body. They had got the meat out of the

grain bag, that was all. Her body was frozen stiff when it was found, and

the shoulders were so narrow and the body so slight that in death it

looked like the body of some charming young girl.

Such things happened in towns of the Middle West, on farms near town,

when I was a boy. A hunter out after rabbits found the old woman's body

and did not touch it. Something, the beaten round path in the little

snow-covered clearing, the silence of the place, the place where the dogs

had worried the body trying to pull the grain bag away or tear it

open-- something startled the man and he hurried off to town.

I was in Main street with one of my brothers who was town newsboy

and who was taking the afternoon papers to the stores. It was almost

night.

The hunter came into a grocery and told his story. Then he went to a

hardware-shop and into a drugstore. Men began to gather on the

sidewalks. Then they started out along the road to the place in the woods.

My brother should have gone on about his business of distributing papers

but he didn't. Every one was going to the woods. The undertaker went

and the town marshal. Several men got on a dray and rode out to where

the path left the road and went into the woods, but the horses weren't very

sharply shod and slid about on the slippery roads. They made no better

time than those of us who walked.

The town marshal was a large man whose leg had been injured in the

Civil War. He carried a heavy cane and limped rapidly along the road. My

brother and I followed at his heels, and as we went other men and boys

joined the crowd.

It had grown dark by the time we got to where the old woman had left

the road but the moon had come out. The marshal was thinking there

might have been a murder. He kept asking the hunter questions. The

hunter went along with his gun across his shoulders, a dog following at

his heels. It isn't often a rabbit hunter has a chance to be so conspicuous.

He was taking full advantage of it, leading the procession with the town

marshal.

face was buried in the snow. No, I didn't know her.

the hunter had not looked closely at the body. He had been frightened.

She might have been murdered and some one might spring out from

behind a tree and murder him. In a woods, in the late afternoon, when the

trees are all bare and there is white snow on the ground, when all is silent,

something creepy steals over the mind and body. If something strange or

uncanny has happened in the neighborhood all you think about is getting

away from there as fast as you can.

The crowd of men and boys had got to where the old woman had

crossed the field and went, following the marshal and the hunter, up the

slight incline and into the woods.

My brother and I were silent. He had his bundle of papers in a bag

slung across his shoulder. When he got back to town he would have to go

on distributing his papers before he went home to supper. If I went along,

as he had no doubt already determined I should, we would both be late.

Either mother or our older sister would have to warm our supper.

Well, we would have something to tell. A boy did not get such a chance

very often. It was lucky we just happened to go into the grocery when the

hunter came in. The hunter was a country fellow. Neither of us had ever

seen him before.

Now the crowd of men and boys had got to the clearing. Darkness

comes quickly on such Winter nights, but the full moon made everything

clear. My brother and I stood near the tree, beneath which the old woman

had died.

She did not look old, lying there in that light, frozen and still. One of

the men turned her over in the snow and I saw everything. My body

trembled with some strange mystical feeling and so did my brother's. It

might have been the cold.

Neither of us had ever seen a woman's body before. It may have been

the snow, clinging to the frozen flesh, that made it look so white and

lovely, so like marble. No woman had come with the party from town;

but one of the men, he was the town blacksmith, took off his overcoat and

spread it over her. Then he gathered her into his arms and started off to

town, all the others following silently. At that time no one knew who she

was.