[单项选择]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 belies the surface thinness of the ordinary American death attitudes. By an effort of the imagination, the great writers faced problems which 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 times, the elaborate theological patterns woven around it in the Middle Ages, tile 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 emotional depths, or because of a dry
A. indifference
B. respect
C. understanding
D. disgust