下面是北外SAT张教授给考生整理的素材，考生掌握里面的生词，下面是详细内容，希望可以帮助到考生。

Theme: Pursuit

Thesis: Effort is involved in pursuing any goal valuable, even if the goal is not reached.

Subject: Van Gogh Vincent

Detail:

In his early years, Van Gogh Vincent clerked in a bookshop in Dordrecht; then, he convinced that the ministry ought to be his vocation, and entered a religious seminary in Brussels. He left 3 months later to become an evangelist in a poor mining section of Belgium, the Borinage. Van Gogh exhibited the zeal and devotion of a martyr, even giving away his clothes, but his religious fanaticism and a lack of charisma as a preacher marked him for failure despite his humanitarian intentions and his sincere devotion to the poor and the sick.

Because of his eccentricities alienated the miners, and he was dismissed in July, 1879. This period was a dark one for Van Gogh. He wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected.5 W+ F. F. x$ `2 c. J

After experiencing a total spiritual crisis, he found a clear direction in the future: he strongly, even obsessively, eagered to be an artist, an ideal to which he devoted the rest of his short life.

The Roaring Twenties wew a decade charaterized by a seemingly strong economy.”The nation was nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”as President Hoover stated,However,overproduction and underconsumption contributed to the desperate condition of farmers and unsound stock practice meant that the price of securities had risen far beyond the value benhind them which together lauched America into the Great Depression,a time of high unemployment and prevalent pessimism dominated the country.The fragile economy that masked with a widespread optimism turened the country into a purgatory.