Text Appreciation

Text Analysis

1. Theme

The man in the water did not have to give his rings to others; he did not even know these people. He was extraordinary precisely because he was ordinary. He showed what everyone of us could do at that critical moment. The display of his heroism was a song to the beautiful human character.

2. Structure

1) Part 1 (Paras. 1—3): The terrible air crash in Washington, D.C. that brought people to tears and to attention and the possible reasons for the national sensation.

2) Part 2 (Paras. 4—9): It’s the ordinary man in the water who performed the extraordinary and stunning deeds that created the emotional impact and the enduring wonder.

3. Further Discussion

Question:

1) Who are the heroes in the story?

Two police rescuers and, a young passerby and the man in the water. To be continued on the next page.

2) Who is the greatest hero? Why?

The man in the water. Ordinary as he was, he could rise to challenge when the test came. He displayed courage and noble character in human nature at its best.

3) In the author’s view, do people feel proud or sad about the disaster? Why?

They feel proud because man defeated the indifferent natural forces.

4) What is referred to as one of man’s natural powers according to the passage?

Sacrificing his life for the life of others’.

5) The fight between the man in the water and the natural forces ended up with the death of the man. Why does the author say he is not a loser?

He was the best we can do to fight against the indifferent natural forces. What’s more, he never dies in people’s heart.

●What was unusual about the air crash?

●Why does the author refer to the aesthetic aspect of the clash?

●What are the things the author mentions to be worth noticing?

●What does the author mean when he says the human nature was groping and struggling?

●Why does the author say that the man went unidentified gave him a universal character?

●How could the man in the water give a lifeline to those who watched him? What does the “lifeline” here symbolize?

●What does the greatness of the anonymous man actually lie in?

●What do you think are the strongest human powers endowed with by nature?

● Writing Device

● Parallelism

What effect do you think it has here?

There was the unusual element of the bridge…

Then, too there was the location of the event…

And there was the aesthetic crash as well…

Still, there was nothing very special, except death…(Para. 1)

● Sentence Paraphrase

1) Washington, the city of form and rules, turned chaotic by a blast of real winter and a single slap of metal on metal. (Para. 1)

With a sharp and loud noise, Washington, the neatly well-designed city of order was thrown into a terrible confusion.

2) And there was the aesthetic clash as well—blue and green Air Florida, the name of a flying garden, sunk down among gray chunks of ice in a black river. (Para. 1)

3) Last Wednesday the elements, indifferent as ever, brought down Flight 90. And on that same afternoon human nature—groping and struggling—rose to the occasion. (Para. 2)

Last Wednesday, the bad weather, unconcerned about the consequences it might bring about as always, made Flight 90 fall down. On that same afternoon, human nature, groping for the flotation rings and struggling in the icy water, came to prove its greatness displayed in an unexpected tragedy.

4) Of the four acknowledged heroes of the event, three are able to account for their behavior. (Para. 3)

Only three out of these four heroes lived to tell people what they actually had done and how they had rescued the five survivors.

5) On television, side by side, they described their courage as all in the line of duty. (Para. 3)

6) Skutnik added that “somebody had to go into the water”, delivering every hero’s line that is no less admirable for being repeated. (Para. 3)

7) But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known first as “the man in the water”. (Para. 4)

8) His selfishness was one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. (Para. 4)

9) For a while he was Everyman, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no one is ordinary. (Para. 4)

10) So the age-old battle began again in the Potomac. For as long as man could last, they went at each other, nature and man. (Para. 7)

11) … the one making no distinctions of good and evil, acting on no principles, offering no lifelines; the other acting wholly on distinctions, principles and, perhaps, on faith. (Para. 7)

12) In reality, we believe the opposite, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in this matter. (Para. 8)

Actually, the death of the man did not mean that human beings had lost the battle. In a moral sense, man had won because man’s courage to defy death was also a tremendous power. Therefore, what happened to this man in the water should fill us with pride rather than sadness.

13) The man in the water set himself against an immovable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with kindness; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do. (Para. 9)