English Quiz 200

(English Quiz 200)

1. As these factors accumulate, killers in the making remain surprisingly cool, all the while strolling toward the edge. That is what makes mass murder especially chilling. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planned the Columbine assault for months, buying guns, practicing their aim, even designing their own shabby bombs that were intended to blow up the building. Cho bought the first of the two pistols he used in his killings on March 13, then bought the second just days before the murders--decorously observing the 30-day waiting period the state of Virginia requires between handgun purchases. Throughout the slow, deliberate smolder that leads up to the shootings, all mass killers also tend to disengage from the people around them. More and more of their emotional energy becomes consumed with planning their assault and, tellingly, with what often appears to be a newfound fascination with firearms and other weapons. "The quiet is the problem," says Welner. "The anger and rage just get bigger and bigger and seep into a fantasy life, and the person becomes increasingly alienated and isolated and contemptuous."
Q: 試翻 "As these factors accumulate, ... toward the edge."
Q: 試翻 "Throughout the slow, ... people around them."

2. The fully annealed killer who emerges from this process is a cold and deliberate thing. The time he's spent rehearsing his carnage is a big part of what causes the actual execution of it to appear so disciplined and free of emotion--or even pleasure. That, however, does not mean that mass murder is conducted entirely without feeling. For the killer, the powerlessness that came from a sense of victimization has been replaced by its perfect opposite--a heady experience that may produce an implacable serenity on the one hand, or the eerily jocular banter that surveillance tapes picked up between Harris and Klebold in Columbine on the other. Making the gunman calmer still is the fact that he has long since convinced himself that the world brought the carnage on itself. Because nobody is exempt from membership in that world, nobody's exempt from the line of fire either. "You forced me into a corner. The decision was yours," were among the most disturbing lines in the suicide videos that Cho left behind, but they may also have been the least original.
Q: 試翻 "For the killer, ... on the other."

3. People like Cho are indeed only seemingly powerful. In an open culture with cheap and plentiful guns, any fool can kill a lot of people. For all the loss and suffering such a shooting sparks, it is in fact a weak and furtive act, one that masquerades as a gesture of sublime power but is really an act of confusion and cowardice. The very purpose of the murders, Welner explains, is to give the shooter the last word. Unfortunately, what he says when he at last has that chance to be heard is: "I surrender."
Q: 試翻 "People like Cho are ... a lot of people."
Q: 試翻 "For all the loss and suffering ... an act of confusion and cowardice."