In November, Focus Features will release a new movie, The Theory of Everything, which describes what happened to the famous physicist Stephen Hawking.
The movie is based on a book by Jane Hawking, Stephen’s first wife. When they met in the early 1960s, Jane was studying literature and got a Ph. D in Spanish poetry, while Stephen was just 21, looking for an interesting physics problem to explore.
Not long after they began dating, he developed balance problems, then speech issues. He was told that he had ALS, a disease that would kill him in two years. Jane’s friends warned her not to stick with a boy with so little time ahead of him. But he and Jane didn’t quit each other. Instead, they willfully pushed on. It wasn’t like they didn’t believe the diagnosis (诊断). They did. They just ignored it.
“We did not want to think about that,” she wrote. “Also, we had this very strong sense at the time that our generation lived anyway under this most awful nuclear cloud — that with a four-minute warning the world itself could likely end. That made us feel that we should make the most of whatever gifts that were given to us.”
They had one child. Then another. He, meanwhile, kept losing ground. He needed help with dressing, then washing, then eating. She tried to keep up.
“I had two babies. I was running the home and looking after Stephen alone. One of the greatest battles was getting Stephen to use a wheelchair,” she continued. “I’d be going out with an adult on one arm, carrying a newly-born baby in the other, with an older baby struggling alongside.”
As Stephen Hawking became more celebrated and dependent, Jane had a third child and he had to allow others to help him. But he fell in love with a nurse and left his wife.
Hmmm, I wonder how they are going to handle this one. It’s a messy story.
【小题1】What was Jane’s friends’ attitude to her dating with Hawking?| A．Disapproving. | B．Unconcerned. | C．Supportive. | D．Optimistic. |
| A．He was a very famous and rich man. |
| B．They shared similar research interest. |
| C．They did not believe the diagnosis. |
| D．She accepted the uncertainty of life. |
| A．Grateful. | B．Stubborn. | C．Reasonable. | D．Reliable. |
| A．The Hawkings. | B．The nurses. | C．Focus Features. | D．Love stories. |
