马克吐温 百万英镑 he Million Pound Note
I want to talk about a very famous story written by Mark Twain---------“The Million Pound Note”. Mark Twain is a great writer
in America in nineteenth century. During his 40 years’ writing career, he
created dozens of short or long stories, today I am introducing his The Million Pound Note.
This story tells about a poor honest American Adam Henry. When he was wandering in the street of London, he was given by two billionaires [bilj??n??] a letter, in which he surprisedly found a million pound bank-note. Later he got to know that the two billionaires who were brothers had made a bet [e] about the results after he got a one million-pound note at once. One of them thought the note wound count for nothing to the poor man because he could not prove that the money was his own while the other considered just as the opposite.
Dramatically, the story went just out of my expectation. Herry went to a restaurant to have dinner first. The manager was mean to him at the beginning but his attitude changed quickly when Herry took out the note and asked for change. Faced with a millionaire, the manager apologized again and again and told Herry that he didn’t need to pay for the bill right
now. So Herry managed to have a free dinner. Then , Herry went to a clothing shop and got a suit of clothes costing him nothing.
Like the story above, people are curious of such a rich man and tried
every means to cozy up to him, from free food, free clothes to free
accommodation[??k?m??dei??n]. At the same time, his social status
was becoming higher and higher and higher than most dukes. Apart from that, he later got a beautiful wife and bank interest.A bright future was waiting for him.
The writing style of this story is so humorous. Mark Twain used hyperbole[ha??p?:b?li:] describing how Herry defeated
snobbishness[?sn?b??] repeatedly. I think the detailed description of different people’s ridiculous actions is vivid, funny, ironic[a??r?n?k]
and humorous
In terms of the theme, it is obviously that the author wanted to
denounce the overflowing mammonism[?mæm?niz?m] in the society.
Even now it gives us an impressive lesson. We cann’t deny[nai] the
importance of money to a person who wants to survive. We won’t live
without money, with which we get food, clothes, house and many other things. But we must know that there are many things which can’t be
bought with money such as love or friendship. So in my opinion, money may be important to us, but not the most important. We need to build up the correct sense of money.
And another point I want to emphasize is honesty. From the story, we can see that there were so many people the brothers could choose, But why is just Herry? I think it was because he was honest. When he got the
note, what he did was not use it right now but return it to the brothers. Without a kind and honest heart, he couldn’t have been such a successful
man.
At last ,I want to say ,to be honest and do not worship money ,maybe it would make your life much better