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Sun 30 Jan, 2011 02:28 pm
Hello! Please answer the following question on the 3 sentences below: do you feel anything special about the sentences you see (perhaps in vocabulary, structure, meaning...) or do they sound absolutely ordinary and do not attract your special attention? I would be especially glad if native English speakers answer.
1) Then he would try it over again, from the beginning, the drum rolling to make you feel how dangerous it was.
2) He went to sleep dreaming mournfully, the expression of his sleeping face one of long weariness, long unhappiness.
3) The girl walked away from the open window, and with her back turned to him, she said, "The trains certainly make a lot of noise.
@Olika,
They seem kinda goofy and wierd. 1.wierd 2.strange3.goofy
@Olika,
As a native speaker they look perfectly normal to me as narrative text.
@Proxima,
Can you tell me, why exactly do they seem weird and goofy to you? What makes them sound this way?
@fresco,
Would you lay special emphasis on the meaning of the 3 sentences because of their structure? As well as Proxima I think the structure like "the drum rolling to make you feel how dangerous it was" is not to be often seen in English.
@Olika,
The "drum rolling" phrase is slightly poetic, that's all. The stylistics of particular writers can set up expectancies within the text . There are no rules about this. It is the intellectual flexibility of the reader which decides whether an idea has been communicated, and in this case it's obvious.
I think they are all very well written and each evokes a visual emotion for me.
They are probably lines from the works of very famous authors.
Do you know the source for each?
@PUNKEY,
Yes, all the sentences are from William Saroyan's short stories. The first is from "Harry" and the other two are from "The trains".
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