The notes of English..

Words

-- prestigious: respected and admired as very important or of very high quality

-- reclusive: Avoiding the company of other people; solitary

-- befriend: to become a friend of somebody, especially somebody who has just arrived in a place or who needs your help

-- antihero: A central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes

-- rejuvenate: to make somebody/something look or feel younger or more lively 使年輕；使更有活力 (返老還童)

-- peculiar: strange or unusual, especially in a way that is unpleasant or worrying = alien

-- lullaby: a soft gentle song sung to make a child go to sleep 搖籃曲；催眠曲

-- estrangement: the state of being estranged; a period of being estranged 疏遠（的一段時間）；分居（期）

-- expulsion: the act of forcing somebody to leave a place; the act of expelling somebody

-- elite: a group of people in a society, etc. who are powerful and have a lot of influence, because they are rich, intelligent, etc.

-- testimonial: a formal written statement, often by a former employer, about somebody's abilities, qualities and character; a formal written statement about the quality of something 證明信；介紹信；推薦信

-- censorship: The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts

-- memoir(法): an account written by somebody, especially somebody famous, about their life and experiences （尤指名人的）回憶錄；自傳

-- credo: a set of beliefs 信條

 Others

--Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705^[1]] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and theglass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

The Ephemera: An Emblem of Human Life (text) ------Benjamin Franklin

-- reflextion of the past + longing for the preditable futrue

-- bitterly dissapointed

Young-adult  

subject matter: teenage confusion, angst, alienation, rebellion

-- holy icon

An icon (from Greek εἰκών eikōn "image") is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certainEastern Catholic churches. More broadly the term is used in a wide number of contexts for an image, picture, or representation; it is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it either concretely or by analogy, as in semiotics; by extension, icon is also used, particularly in modern culture, in the general sense of symbol — i.e. a name, face, picture, edifice or even a person readily recognized as having some well-known significance or embodying certain qualities: one thing, an image or depiction, that represents something else of greater significance through literal or figurative meaning, usually associated with religious, cultural, political, or economic standing.

-- be (out) hard to be with 

--Testament 

The Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures are the collection of books that forms the first of two parts of the Christian Biblical canon. The contents of the Old Testament canon vary from church to church, with the Orthodox communion having 51 books: the shared books are those of the shortest canon, that of the major Protestant communions, with 39 books. Christians hold different views of the Old Testament or Old Covenant in contrast to the New Covenant.

The New Testament (Greek: Καινὴ Διαθήκη, Kainē Diathēkē) is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament.

Unlike the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, of which Christians hold different views, the contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with 1st century Christianity, although both the Old and New Testament are regarded, together, as Sacred Scripture. The New Testament has therefore (in whole or in part) frequently accompanied the spread of Christianity around the world, and both reflects and serves as a source for Christian theology. Phrases as well as extended readings directly from the New Testament are also incorporated (along with readings from the Old Testament) into the various Christian liturgies. The New Testament has influenced not only religious, philosophical, and political movements in theChristian world, but also left an indelible mark on its literature, art, and music.

-- The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they sought jobs, land, dignity and a future. When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags," and this work won a large following among the working class due to Steinbeck's sympathy to the workers' movement and his accessible prose style.

(farmer / humanity)

--Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933) is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award. In 1969 he became a major celebrity with the publication of the controversial Portnoy's Complaint, the humorous and sexually explicit psychoanalytical monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor," filled with "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language."

Roth has since become one of the most honored authors of his generation: his books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel,American Pastoral, which featured his best-known character, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roth's novels. His 2001 novel The Human Stain, another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. His fiction, set frequently in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "supple, ingenious style," and for its provocative explorations of Jewishand American identity.