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| ■ 東京大学過去問２０１７年（５） |
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次の文章を読み、（Ａ）〜（Ｄ）の問いに答えよ。 When she died last year at the age of ninety-four, I'd known Doris* for fifty years. In all that time I've never managed to figure out a ( 26 ) for her that properly and briefly describes her role in my life, let alone my role in hers. We have a handy set of words to describe our nearest relations: mother, father, daughter, son, uncle, aunt, cousin, although (A)that's as far as it goes usually in contemporary Western society. Doris wasn't my mother. I didn't meet her until she opened the door of her house after I had knocked on it to be allowed in to live with her. What should I call her to others? For several months I lived with Doris, worked in the office of a friend of hers and learned typing. Then, after some effort, she persuaded my father to allow me to go back to school. As a ( 27 ), he had turned down further schooling after I was expelled ― for climbing out of the first-floor bathroom window to go to a party in the town ― from the progressive, co-ed boarding school** that I had been sent to some years before when I was eleven. My father gave in and Doris sent me to my new school. At the new school, teenagers constantly referred to and complained about their parents, using the regular words for them. Could I refer to Doris as my adoptive mother? She hadn't adopted me, although she'd suggested it. My mother had had one of her screaming fits and threatened to sue Doris if she tried to adopt me. So that was quietly dropped. I sometimes said 'adoptive mother' anyway, as an easy though inexact solution. It mattered how I referred to her: whenever I was called on to say 'Doris, my er… sort of, adoptive mother… my er… Doris…' to refer to my adult-in-charge, I was aware of giving the wrong impression. For some reason, being precise, finding a simple possessive phrase that covered my circumstances, was very important. I didn't want to lie and I did want to find some way of summing up my ( 28 ) accurately to others. But I hadn't been an adopted child. Both my parents were still alive and (regrettably, in my view) in contact with me. After I was expelled from my old school, I ran away from my father in Banbury and went to stay with my mother in Hove, in her very small flat. That had lasted only a few days before the wisest ( 29 ) seemed to be to roll up in a corner and refuse to eat or talk. 'How can you do this to me? Why can't you be decent, like other children?' she screamed. It was considered a good idea to keep me away from my parents, so after the authorities had fed me, they put me into the Lady Chichester Hospital in Hove. It was a small psychiatric unit in a large detached house. I became the official baby of the place, and both staff and patients looked after me and tried to shield me from the worst of the other people's problems. I was fascinated and felt quite at home and well cared for at last. I developed a secret ( 30 ) that I was mysteriously pregnant and the doctor was waiting for me to come to terms with it. Apart from that, I wasn't mentally ill at all and they weren't trying to treat me. I stayed there for four months, without medication, spending long periods sitting on the beach in Hove, staring at the sea ― it was a winter unprecedented ice and snow ― while they tried to figure out what to do with me. Then, all of a sudden, I received a letter from Doris, saying that although I didn't know her, she knew about me from her son, who had been in my class at school. Much over-excited gossip, you can imagine, had been going on there about the wicked Jennifer who'd got expelled and was now in a madhouse. In his letter to Doris, her son Peter wondered, in all innocent generosity (since we had by no means got on with each other at school), if since I was 'quite intelligent', they might not be able to help me somehow. Doris said in her letter to me that she had just moved into her first house, that it had central heating (she was particularly proud of that) and a spare room, so I might like to stay there, and perhaps, in spite of my father's reluctance, go back to school to get my exams and go to university. It wasn't clear in the letter how long I was invited to stay for, but the notion of going to university suggested something long-term. I read the letter many times. The first time (B)with a kind of shrug: 'Ah, I see. That's what's going to happen to me next.' Unexpected things had happened to me so frequently and increasingly during my childhood that they seemed normal. I came to expect them with a detached passivity. Then I read the letter again with astonishment that I had a guardian angel. Then fear. Then a certain amount of disappointment, and some real thought about whether to accept or not. And finally all these responses were mixed, and I had no idea how to respond either to my own fears and expectations, or to this stranger for her invitation. So Doris was not my mother. And aside from (C)awkward social moments, what she was to me was laid aside along with other questions best left unthought. 注* Doris イギリスのノーベル賞作家ドリス＝レッシング（1919〜2013） 注** co-ed boarding school 男女共学の全寮制の学校 (A) 下線部(A)を前後関係をふまえて次のように言い換える場合、空所に入る最も適切な単語１語を書きなさい。 that's ( ) we usually use (B) 下線部(B)で筆者はなぜこのような反応をしたのか、日本語で説明せよ。 (C) 下線部(C)の具体的な内容を日本語で説明せよ。 (D) 以下の問いに答え、解答の記号をマークシートにマークせよ。 （ア） 空所(26)〜(30)には単語が一つずつ入る。それぞれに文脈上適切な語を次のうちから一つずつ選び、マークシートの(26)〜(30)にその記号をマークせよ。同じ記号を複数回用いてはならない。 (a) designation (b) disease (c) fear (d) generosity (e) move (f) participation (g) punishment (h) result (i) rush (j) situation （イ） 本文の内容と合致しないものはどれか。一つ選び、マークシートの(31)にその記号をマークせよ。 (a) The author struggled to define her relationship with Doris. (b) The author's mother did not want her to be adopted by Doris. (c) A bad rumour about the author was spreading at her new school. (d) Doris's son wanted to help the author because she was very smart. (e) The author was staying at a hospital when she received a letter from Doris. （ウ） Dorisと筆者の関係を表現するのに最も適切なものを一つ選び、マークシートの(32)にその記号をマークせよ。 (a) disastrous (b) illegal (c) passionate (d) unconventional (e) unstable |
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