高級英語第三課Blackmail課件.ppt

1、Unit SixBlackmail,Lead-in Background Information Textual Structure Detailed Study of the Text Summary Exercises,Background information,Arthur Hailey: Born in Luton, England, in 1920, Arthur Hailey was educated in English schools until age fourteen. After a brief career as an office boy, he joined th

2、e British Royal Air Force in 1939 and served through World War II, rising through the ranks to become a pilot and flight lieutenant. In 1947, Mr. Hailey emigrated to Canada, where he was successively a real estate salesman, business paper editor and a sales and advertising executive. He became, and

3、still is, a Canadian citizen. In 1956, Arthur Hailey scored his first writing success with a TV drama, Flight Into Danger, which later became a motion picture and a novel, Runway Zero-Eight. Since then, as a novelist and one of the great storytellers of our time, he has acquired a worldwide followin

4、g of devoted readers and his books are published in twenty-seven languages. Arthur Hailey and his wife, Sheila, make their home at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, where their children, Jane, Steven and Diane, join them during college vacations.,Background information,In the 1960s and 1970s Arthur Hailey,

5、 a British/Canadian writer, had a stream of enormously successful novels set in very different work places, as indicated by some of their titles: Hotel, Airport, Wheels, the Evening News. Though a Canadian himself, he set the scene of most of his works in the United States. Each of his books deals w

6、ith one particular field of society. This is made clear by the titles of his books. It is this peculiarity of his that is value to those who are eager to learn about contemporary American society.,Background information,A List of Arthur Haileys Novels RUNWAY ZERO-EIGHT . 1958THE FINAL DIAGNOSIS . 19

7、59IN HIGH PLACES . 1960HOTEL . 1965AIRPORT . 1968WHEELS . 1971THE MONEYCHANGERS . 1975OVERLOAD . 1979STRONG MEDICINE . 1984THE EVENING NEWS . 1990DETECTIVE . 1997,Background information,About the novel Hotel The St. Gregory Hotel is the largest in New Orleans, Louisiana. For 4 days from Monday eveni

8、ng to Friday, the hotel goes through a succession of dramatic events. With the hotels mortgage due by the weekend and with no chance of getting further renewal, the owner, Warren Trent, reluctantly makes up his mind to sell his hotel to a chain hotel owner, Curtis OKeefe.,Background information,Pete

9、r McDermott, the assistant general manager, has to tackle several other knotty problems: handling an attempted rape which has occurred in one of the hotels rooms; catching a professional thief operating in the hotel; pacifying a whole convention of several hundred dentists to putting up a member of

10、the convention-a black doctor. Then there is the Duke of Croydon.,Background information,The Duke is an internationally famous statesman and the newly-appointed British ambassador to Washington. He and his wife occupy the best suite in St. Gergory. On Monday evening while driving back with his wife

11、from a gambling house, the Duke and the Duchess, however, drive away. The hit-and-run becomes top sensational news in New Orleans. The hotels chief house detective Ogilvie notices the battered car when it comes back. Instead of reporting this to the police, he goes to see the Duke and the Duchess. H

12、e promises to keep quiet about what he knows and asks for a large sum of money in return for the favour. The Duke, now totally at a loss as to how to act, hides behind the skirt of her wife. The Duchess understands that to get themselves out of this mess, the car has to be driven out of the south wh

13、ere people are alerted about the hit-and-run.,Background information,So she offers to pay Ogilvie more than he has asked on condition that he drives the car to Chicago up in the north. The greedy detective agrees. At one oclock Thursday morning Ogilvie gets the car out of the garage. He is seen leav

14、ing by one person only, by Peter McDermott, the assistant general manager. Though it strikes him as odd, Peter does not link this up with the hit-and-run until late that afternoon when he witnesses the funeral of the two victims of the accident. He contacts police headquarters right away. By this ti

15、me, Ogilvie has crossed Louisiana and Mississippi, driving by night and concealing the car by day. He thinks that everything is going smoothly, little knowing that he is already being followed by the Highway patrol cruisers. In Tennessee, he is caught and sent back to New Orleans.,Background informa

16、tion,At first the Duchess tries to deny everything, but doesnt succeed in convincing the police. The Duke then decides to go over to police headquarters before they come for him, wishing to save the little shreds of decency left in him. He takes an elevator to go down. This elevator which has been o

17、ut of order for some time and badly in need of repair breaks down. As it goes down, one set of clamps holds and the other fails. The elevator car twists, buckles and splits open, throwing the Duke nine floors down to the cement ground. He dies instantly.,Background information,However, the novel ends with a pleasant surprise. A sick, old eccentric man staying in the hotel turns out to be an extremely wealthy man from Montreal, Canada. Earlier, he fell seriously ill an