At school, it was drilled into us only to write prose in full sentences, each with a subject and a predicate. It was difficult to tell the difference between the force of a syntactical rule and that of a moral law.
In this edition, p. 318 begins:
"Fear for the Empire, Technic society and, yes, those other societies the Empire enclosed."
"Fear" is a subject without a predicate. What is going on here? We must backtrack. The second last paragraph on p. 317 ends:
"It was that she was full of grief and fear."
A full sentence (which this is not). The last paragraph on p. 317 begins:
"Grief for her dear Ramnuans, who had given her the name 'Banner' that she still bore."
Thus, they might have been punctuated differently but it becomes clear that the paragraphs beginning "Grief..." and "Fear..." follow directly from the paragraph ending "...grief and fear." (I did have to backtrack to pick up the thread.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Do you think this was, literarily, a weak spot in THE GAME OF EMPIRE? Truth to say, I had not noticed this possible flaw in my previous readings of the story. Probably because I did understand what "Banner" meant or felt.
I still find it odd to call a lady "Banner"!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
My English teacher would have said that it broke the rules! Although, after a very literary minded pupil argued with him for a while, he just said, "Well, I'll tell you the rules and you do what you want with them." I don't think that it was a weak spot. The meaning was clear enough either at first reading or with very minimal rereading.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Gotcha. And I agree. I have some sympathy for the rules. They generally make sense, after all.
Ad astra! Sean
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