東京外国語大学　前期日程・全問題


　【１】　【２】　【３】　【４】　【５】

【１】

　次の文章を読んで下の1〜６の問に答えなさい．答は解答欄に日本語で書きなさい.(80点)

The rain dropped straight out of a featureless gray sky so low I almost felt the need to stoop. It was the sort of winter morning to which the universal human response is "I'd rather not." The day before had been just like it, and it was impossible to imagine that the next day, or the one after that, would be any different.

I stood at the corner of Fillmore and Hayes gripping a disintegrating black umbrella and awaiting the arrival of the 22 bus. I was on my way to my job as an unpaid intern in a low-fee counseling center.

Three or four people huddled in the glass-enclosed shelter while I lurked nearby, an outcast. A small torrent coursed along the curb, carrying by bits of debris at a remarkable velocity. Periodically, someone would step into the street to peer through the sheets of rain in search of the bus.

(a)I marveled that, after days of intermittent downpour, there were (a) still people rushing down the street without umbrella or raincoat, as if caught in a freak storm in the middle of the dry season.

Cars rolled by, their tires making hissing and sucking sounds on the glistening asphalt. My knees grew cold as the rain began to dampen my pants legs. My shoulders were hunched and my face clenched in a grimace , as if my body was trying to withdraw into itself. Despite the liquidity of the outside world, I felt dry and barren inside.

After an eternity of the sort that can only be experienced while waiting for a bus in the rain, one appeared on the crest of the hill, its headlights shining through the gloom. As it approached, we all examined it anxiously, calculating the possibility of getting a seat. The

bus was not crowded, but the six or seven standing silhouettes meant that all the seats were taken.

The people in the shelter began to jostle for position as they tried to guess where the door would be when the bus came to a halt. Though many bus drivers stop their vehicles out in the street, making no attempt to approach the curb, this bus pulled right up to the shelter, allowing those inside to step into the bus with a minimum of exposure to the rain. I folded my umbrella and joined the line.

I was startled from my melancholy by a loud, cheerful voice just inside the bus door. The driver was warmly greeting each passenger with a booming "Good morning! How ya doing? Please watch your step !"

As our dripping group mounted the bus steps, waving limp passes or dropping cold coins into the fare box, we were met with a beaming smile from a bearded, middle-aged black man in a brown polyester uniform. He nodded at each of us, seeming genuinely pleased that we were boarding his vehicle. Because many drivers seem, at best, sullen and withdrawn, this gracious and friendly behavior was perplexing. Each of us responded with a confused "Good morning," and a puzzled smile.

The driver steered the bus into the street. Rather than accelerating so rapidly that everyone standing or sitting had to grab for something to hold on to, the driver called out, "Here we go, everyone - please hold on! " and gently piloted the bus away from the curb.

Muttering "Excuse me, " I squirmed past the people standing in the aisle. Rubbing against damp coats and backpacks and trying not to step directly on any feet, I made my way toward the back of the bus. About halfway, a blond young man in a camouflage jacket popped up from his seat and moved toward the rear door. Looking around to be sure there were no old folks standing, disturbing my conscience, I swung into the vacant seat.

The windows were opaque with condensation, except where droplets ran down, stitching gray lines to the bottom of the glass. The window seat in front of me was unoccupied because of a steady drip of rainwater, which had somehow filtered through the light fixture.

Next to me sat a small Chinese woman wearing a blue baseball cap . With her tiny mitten, she had that read " World's Greatest Dad " cleared a circle on the foggy window and was gazing intently through it attempting to discern our location. (b)The driver seemed to answer her unspoken question when he called out in a warm voice, "Next stop, -McAllister Street. Transfer to the Number 5 bus."

Wet days on mass transit are always the most difficult. Ordinarily, the rain, dripping coats, leaking windows and umbrellas wielded like swords seem to inflame people's normal resentments and frustrations. A feeling of bare-fanged, Darwinian competition fills the humid air.

But I began to realize that this was not the usual rainy-day commute. All around I saw smiles on faces that seemed to come from every part of the world. Nearly everyone was straining attentively toward the front of the vehicle, as though they did not want to miss what was happening. The driver was narrating our journey along Fillmore Street, offering information about the stores and buildings, as well as the connecting buses and key destinations along their routes.

While he spoke, he kept his large hands on the wide steering wheel and his eyes on the road. As the windshield wipers pushed aside thick ropes of rainwater, he seemed to be scanning the watery landscape for dangers and for lost souls. A couple of times, he stopped in the middle of a block to pick up some soaked commuter, like Noah taking in stragglers on that morning the Flood began. When we stopped at a traffic light, he would turn and smile broadly, not just at those near him, but at every one of us.

Each time he put the bus into motion, he said in fatherly tones, "Here we go, folks, now hang on. We're going to be all right." (c)His words seemed to be reassurance not just about our ride through the winter weather, but somehow about the lives we would continue once we left his safekeeping.

He also engaged in banter with the passengers nearest him, as if they were a circle of good friends who had gathered in the neighborhood cafe. He flirted with a gray-haired woman who sat in the front seat - "Don't you look nice today, dear!" Zipped up to the chin in a bright red raincoat, she smiled with girlish pleasure.

He made little jokes that weren't really funny but were so suffused with warmth and good humor that I could not help but laugh along with everyone else. I couldn't tell if they all knew him or just felt as though they did. On that cold, wet day, people seemed drawn to him as though to a glowing fire.

Seated in one of the front seats reserved for the elderly and the disabled was a young blind man grasping a slender white cane. With his head cocked, he listened to the exchanges between the driver and other passengers. His eyes were dark and lifeless, but his smile was radiant. He rocked his body with a pleasure he could not contain. Finally, he burst out, "Driver, I don't know you, but I love you! "

As everyone else laughed and smiled, the driver, without taking his eyes off the road ahead, replied with sincerity, "Well, I love you, too. "

What amazed me the most was that I believed him. He seemed to be a saint, a bodhisattva who had appeared to lift us from our self-absorption and remind us of our common humanity. Every guarded and cynical city dweller on that bus was touched by his presence.

As we approached the stop where I was to change bus lines, I felt regret that I had to leave this scene and spend the rest of my commute on an ordinary bus. As the driver wished me and the other disembarking passengers well, I reluctantly stepped out into the rain. But as I stood once again in the downpour, I (d)realized I had under one a  transformation: I had boarded that bus feeling gloomy and isolated and left it with a sense of connection to my fellow citizens and with a subtle feeling of hope reborn. Though the next bus ride was quite ordinary, I felt a strange kindness toward its glum, soggy occupants.

Later that morning, during the weekly meeting of my training group at the counseling center, we took time to "check in, " to tell a little bit about our lives during the week since our previous gathering. One counselor described a conflict she had had with her landlord, another spoke of his visit with his ailing father.

When my turn came. I told the story of my commute and the way that driver had altered the day of dozens of people on his bus. As I described the experience to my colleagues, I could see that they, too, were affected. They were smiling the same smile that I had seen on the faces on the bus.

I imagined that, all over San Francisco, passengers from that bus were telling friends and co-workers about their encounter with the driver. It was an almost (e)Dickensian2) vision of the way that one person of goodwill can create a ripple of benevolence through an entire city. Concentric circles of kindness seemed to emanate from that bus on Fillmore Street. Sometimes you find grace in the most unlikely places. (1590 words)

〔注〕

1)bodhisattva:菩薩(ぼさつ)

2)Dickensian:ディケンズの.[Dickens英国の小説家(1817-70)l

(設問)

1.       下線部(a)について,筆者は何に驚いたのか,50字以内で説明しなさい.

2.       筆者とバス停で待っていた何人かがバスに乗り込んだとき,彼らは運転手のふるまいをどう感じたか.40字以内で答えなさい.

3.       下線部(b)について,questionとは何か,20字以内で具体的に書きなさい.

4.       下線部(c)の内容を40字以内で説明しなさい.

5.       下線部(d)の内容を45字以内で説明しなさい.

6.       下線部(e)は,本文ではどのような意味で使われているか,30字以内で説明しなさい.

【２】

［２］次の文章を読んでその論旨を１００字以上１２０字以内の日本語で要約しなさい.解答は,解答欄に書きなさい．なお,句読点は１字に数えますが,文頭は１マスあけずに書きなさい.(50点)

The subject matter of the social sciences is conscious, feeling beings who act out of choice . We do not need to go into detailed arguments about the extent to which people are really 'free'. All we have to recognize is that, whatever the sources of uniformity in human behaviour, they are not 'binding' in any absolute sense. The most oppressive regime may constrain us so tightly that we can choose only between conformity and death, but we can still choose the latter. This distinguishes us utterly from the subject matter of the natural sciences. Water cannot refuse to have its volatility1) increased as it is heated. With pressure held constant, water cannot boil at 100℃ for four days and then refuse to do so on the fifth day. People can. Even the lowest worm can turn.

This leads us to recognize that what counts as explanation in the social sciences is quite unlike explanation in physics or chemistry. We explain why the kettle boils by citing the general laws of pressure, temperature, and volatility. Because the water has not decided to boil (a decision that it could change on some other occasion) , we do not need to refer to the consciousness of the water. If we wish only to identify some very broad regularities of human behaviour, then we can treat social characteristics like the variables of natural science and propose, for example, that unskilled workers are more likely than businessmen to vote socialist, but if we wish to explain why that is the case then we have to examine the beliefs, values, motives, and intentions of the people in question. Because the human consciousness is the engine that drives all action, the social sciences have to go further than the natural sciences. When the chemist has repeatedly found the same reactions in his experiments, he stops. Identifying the regularity is the end of that search. For the social scientist it is only the beginning. Even if we found that everyone in a particular situation always did a particular thing (and such strong regularities are almost unknown), we would want to know why.

The words 'what' and 'why' can neatly express the difference. For the chemist they can be the same thing. When you have collected enough data under the right controlled circumstances to be confident you know what happens, you also know why. But when the German sociologist Max Weber collected enough information to persuade himself that there was some strong connection between the spread of the Puritan branch of the Protestant Reformation2) and the rise of modern industrial capitalism (the 'what' issue) , he had only begun. He wanted to know why the Puritans developed a set of attitudes that were particularly harmonious with modern capitalist practices. He wanted to know why a particular set of religious beliefs could have created a novel attitude to work and to consumption. He sought the answer in the minds of the Puritans. In order to explain, he had to understand. (502 words)

(注)1)volatility:揮発性

2)Protestant Reformation:宗教改革