hill topper
隨心所欲的寫些想寫的
昨天在一個英文班裏讀到一篇美國高中的範文，是摘自美國作家厄普頓·辛克萊的小說《屠場》（又譯作“叢林”）中的，時隔110年，仍覺的觸目驚心和“似曾相識”，雖說米國是“祖師爺”，但事實是人類的貪婪“叢林”本性在不同的地域、時間一直延續著，隻是疑問我等天國也要曆經百年才能圖治嗎？伊噓唏，危乎遠哉！
以下內容是這篇節選範文的梗概譯文，但奉勸：
“你讀《叢林》之前，務必不要吃東西，那是要吐出來的！”
“讀過《叢林》之後，我再也不想碰香腸和肉食品了！”
這是2006年兩位讀者對於1906年小說的評論。辛克萊（Upton Sinclair）在小說《叢林》（The Jungle）裏，對於肉食品加工廠的肮髒環境做了仔細描寫，今天人們讀了還想嘔吐。辛克萊惡心了美國人一百年。
厄普頓·辛克萊（1878-1968）是二十世紀一位著名多流派詩人。出版於1906年《屠場》揭露了芝加哥肉類加工產業和類似產業的一些城市的惡劣情形。此書的出版發行引起公眾的強烈反響，並迫使美國國會通過了《純淨食品和藥品法》和《肉類製品監督法》。同年，也催生了大名鼎鼎的FDA。
故事梗概
芝加哥的帕克鎮，座落著達哈姆家族的聯合畜產品加工廠。
有個名叫吉蓋的工人的工作是給打暈的牛放血，紅刀子進白刀子出——這麽說不一定對，因為他常常來不及擦掉刀子上的血跡，從第二隻牛起，就紅刀子進紅刀子出了。比起上一道工序的夥伴們，掄著大錘砸暈幾千條牛，算是輕鬆。
一個工人掉到大煉油鋼罐裏，人們最後從中撈到了他的骨頭，而他本人已被製成“達哈姆牌純豬板油”！（注：這兩段紅字的內容並沒有放在高中節選的範文中，因為太過血腥和惡性刺激）
喬納斯則透露：他們利用了豬身上的一切，除了它的叫聲，在這裏，不管是已經腐爛的碎肉內髒，還是豬鬃豬皮，任何有機物質都不會被浪費掉。從醃肉車間裏取出的豬肉常常發酸，就搓上蘇打粉，去掉酸臭味，經過化學處理，需要什麽顏色、香味、味道就能有什麽顏色、什麽香味、什麽味道，然後再賣到自助午餐櫃台上去。作火腿有巧妙的機器專門灌注鹽水。歐洲退貨回來的火腿，已經長了白色黴菌，公司讓工人們把它切碎，填入香腸；商店倉庫存放過久已經變味的牛油，公司把它回收，重新融化。經過去味工序，又返回顧客餐桌；公司的技術人員的才幹就是把發臭的肉類去掉味道，他們發明了添加硼砂、甘油；技術員們靠調味劑和染料就可以把同一種雞肉做成鬆竹雞、子雞等不同品種的罐頭；綿羊和羔羊肉都來自山羊身上……
香腸車間的情況更可怕。倉庫的生肉在地板上堆成垛，你站在高處用手掌抹一把頂部，就能抹出一把老鼠屎；工廠為製伏成群的老鼠，到處擺放了有毒的麵包做誘餌，工人卻漫不經心地將毒死的老鼠和生肉一起鏟進絞肉機的進料漏鬥；車間沒有專用洗手池，工人就在一個水槽裏搓洗油汙的雙手，這水槽裏的水是要配置調料加到香腸裏去的；肉倉裏的肉就丟在地下，和垃圾、鋸末混在一起，工人在上麵踐踏，吐痰、留下成億的結核細菌。
生活在這個肉食加工王國裏的工人並不愉快。醃漬車間的工人走來，大老遠就聞到他們一身的腥臭氣。他們在醃肉的同時，把自己也醃透了：先是指尖發炎，膿腫，隨後指甲脫落。老工人的手指，比別人短了一截。
屠場的內部情況簡直難以形容，但辛克萊把它形容的繪聲繪色，令人寒毛倒豎，難怪讀到這本書的美國總統會當場把香腸甩飛，就連我這位遠在一百一十年後的普通讀者此時也暗下決心以後絕不吃火腿類食品……
EXCERPT FROM THE JUNGLE
by Upton Sinclair 1906
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was a famous twentieth century poet who often experimented with different genres. The Jungle, published in 1906, exposed the harsh conditions of the meatpacking industry in Chicago and other similar industrial cities. Public pressure during the aftermath of the book’s publication led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act, which helps ensure that meat is packaged under sanitary conditions. As you read the text, take notes on Sinclair's use of imagery and tone in describing the conditions of the meatpacking industry.
With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest—that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus,1 by which they saved time and increased the capacity2 of the plant—a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor—a process known to the workers as “giving them thirty per cent.” Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as “Number Three Grade,” but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade—there was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such schemes—they had what they called “boneless hams,” which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and “California hams,” which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy “skinned hams,” which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them—that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled “head cheese!”
It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions- a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.
There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.
There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water – and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage – but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.
