Text 3
Much of the American anxiety about old age is a flight from the reality of death. One of the striking qualities of the American character is the unwillingness to face either the fact or meaning of death. In the more somber tradition of American literature -- from Hawthorne and Melville and Poe to Faulkner and Hemingway -- one finds a tragic depth that disguises the surface thinness of the ordinary American death attitudes. By an effort of the imagination, the great writers faced problems that the culture in action is reluctant to face -- the fact of death, its mystery, and its place in the back-and-forth shuttling of the eternal recurrence. The unblinking confrontation of death in Greek time, the elaborate theological patterns woven around it in the Middle Ages, the ritual celebration of it in the rich, peasant cultures of Latin and Slavic Europe and in primitive cultures; these are difficult to find in American life.
Whether through fear of the emot
A. a characteristic of American society.
B. a quality found in all civilizations.
C. a quality inherited from our Latin ancestors.
D. a quality of the American character.
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