IV. Text Analysis

part  I  (para 1~2) 

the general impression of Westmoreland  rich and ugly

1. On a Winter day some years ago, coming out of Pittsburgh on one of the expresses of the Pennsylvania Railroad, I rolled eastward for an hour through the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county. 

 express n.a fast, direct train, making few stops

 roll vi.to travel in a wheeled vehicle (here an express train) 

Pittsburgh

A city in southwest Pennsylvania , It is one of the most important industrial cities of America, and a center of rail and river transportation. Termed the “Steel City” of “Smoky City”, it is the center of rich bituminous-coal region, producing also natural gas,  oil and limestone, a large part of US steel and iron is produced here.

Westmoreland county

1)A county on southwest Pennsylvania 

2)Its county seat is Greensburg. It is a mining and manufacturing region.

2. Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth---and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke .

the very heart: metaphor 

the most important center of industrial Ameirca to the heart of a human body.

lucrative adj. profitable

hideous adj. terribly ugly

bleak adj. not cheerful, gloomy, dreary

forlorn adj. wretched, miserable, in a pitiful condition

3. What I allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in sight.

hyperbole

unbroken ugliness:

ugliness that was continuous and uninterrupted was ugly no matter where you looked.

agonizing ugliness:

ugliness that caused great pain (to people who saw it)

sheer revolting monstrousness:

the absolute, disgusting hideouness

4.