English Intensive Reading 吉林大学远程教育学院
Introduction Text Language Points Grammar
				Lesson 8   Text  ( Page 6)
			Roosevelt studied Marshall over his glasses, then (53)unlipped a great show of teeth and laughter. Shortly thereafter, he made a more objective study of Marshall’s recommendations and eventually (54) bought the ground-force concept.         Occasionally, humor goes beyond saving arguments, saving face or saving jobs; it can save life itself. Victor E.Frankl was a psychiatrist imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II. As the shrinking number of surviving prisoners descended to new depths of hell, Frankl and his closest prisoner friend sought desperately for ways to keep from dying. (55)Piled on top of malnutrition, exhaustion and disease, suicidal despair was the big killer in these citadels of degradation.         As a psychiatrist, Frankl knew that humor was one of the soul’s best survival weapons, (56)since it can create, if only for moments, aloofness from horror. Therefore, Frankl made a rule that once each day he and his friend must invent and tell an amusing anecdote, specifically about something which could happen after their liberation.         Others were caught up in the contagion of defiant laughter. One starving prisoner forecast that in the future he might be at a prestigious formal dinner, and when the soup was being served, (57)he would shatter protocol by imploring the hostess, “Ladle it from the bottom!”         (58) If humor can be used successfully against such odds, what can’t You and I do with it in daily life?