issue48 加州阳光第五次作业(补)

riverwUID: 2199459

48"The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten."

1. 名人和普通群众都重要，不过对历史的研究得以名人为主，对普通人的研究为辅。
2. 名人在历史重大事件和潮流中占有主导地位：是重要事件和趋势的发起者，并对事件的发展产生决定性的影响，有代表性。
3. 普通群众也不可忽视：形成社会舆论，参与并完成事件。对普通群众的研究可以使历史研究更加完整。
4. 但不可过分追求对普通群众的研究。他们对重大历史事件来说不具有代表性，如果研究历史以研究普通群众为主，那么需要大量积累才能对历史事件和潮流有一个清晰的认识，这使得历史研究的工作量更大。另外他们所遗留下来的凭据因为不出名而未能很好地保存。
5.结尾。

The study of history is very important for human to know how we could go through the long river of time and where we are. The history is framed by a great deal of significant events and trends which always involves the participants of not only the few famous figures who are the main researching objects of historian, but also those ordinary people whose identities have long been forgotten. Is the study of history on a wrong way since it places too much emphasis on the famous individuals as the speaker asserts? In my point of view, both the two kinds of roles in history merit much attention indeed, and furthermore, the few famous figures should remain the main research materials since it actually contributes much more to the study than the ordinary groups of people does.

Firstly, the famous figures always play vital and irreplaceable roles in significant historical events or trends and their thoughts and behaviors form the main frame of history. A person belonging to "the famous few", either good or bad, usually creates important ideas which can grow up to be a series of thoughts or theories as he/she spreads it widely among the common people and eventually lead to certain well-known movement. The famous person can not only make plans to start the movement, but also pose great influences on its development. In this case, one key individual can well represent a certain period of history. It is entirely necessary to gather and probe the stories of those famous figures when we study history. For example, a completely study of Hitler's life might reveal to a very satisfactory extent why German would initiate the World War II and lose the war at the end. In contrast, a World War II researcher will reach for little truth if his spirit and energy are mainly spent on those German soldiers or common citizens.

Secondly, it is indisputable that the ordinary people are also engaged in the big events or social trends even though most of them could not be memorized by future generations. The ordinary groups accept the ideas of those key individuals and tend to follow their leadership either in mental level or real actions, and create an appropriate social environment for those thoughts and theories to be nurtured and put into reality at a proper time. Without the support from the common people, any idea or thought, no matter how great it is, will face a situation as a fish without water, dies eventually. The stories of the ordinary groups can help to understand what ideas they chose to accept and follow, how the famous figures thought and behaved, thus to describe the history more precisely and enrich the profile of history in our minds. For instance, a soldier's diary might tell us his personal view of the war and probably the situation his nation was facing, likewise a citizen's vote preference raises the voice from common citizen about what kind of nation the populace is expecting to see.

Although the ordinary groups of people deserve a great deal of attention in the study of history, we should still pay much more emphasis on those famous figures. The ordinary people seldom create great ideas or show powerful leadership in any big events so that any one of them alone is not representative of the whole history. To reach the truth of history by studying ordinary people, we should have to accumulate their information to a large amount so as to form the holistic view of history. Unfortunately their records rarely survive since they are too common to be specially recorded. The study focusing on the ordinary will therefore spend much time and energy on searching valuable materials and data, which is very expensive concerning our limited researching human resources. In contrast, it is not so much difficult to find useful records of the few famous figures even if they lived a very long time ago. With much more influences in history and more available records today, the famous individuals should continue to be the main studying objects.

In summary, the events and trends in history were accomplished not only by the few famous individuals, but also by those ordinary groups of people. The emphasis placed on the former in the study of history is a meaningful and feasible choice. Meanwhile, the study of ordinary people is also necessary to reveal the truth in detail and enrich the profile of history.