http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CraBlue.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
You cannot take it out of context and make sense of it. Read the entire paragraph below. Think about how the 5 men responsible for the murder are described. Then think about the difference in functions between nouns and adverbs. What conclusions do you draw?
"Fun or not," said the Easterner, "Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man. I let the Swede fight it out alone. And you -- you were simply puffing around the place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five men -- you, I, Johnnie, old Scully, and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement, and gets all the punishment."
What does this mean “This poor gambler isn’t even a noun. He is kind of an adverb.”?
This is a queston that's popped up in my head while reading "The Blue Hotel" by: Stephen crane.
What I have doesn't really make sense i just compared an adverb to a noun.
5 answers
Is it saying that he doesn't act like a man but he describes as a murderor.???
The guy speaking (the Easterner) is saying that the gambler ("that fool of an unfortunate gambler") seems to have stumbled into the scene when the murder was happening. The others apparently were the actual murderers, and the gambler was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Whoah!! I was way off.. Thank You:)
You're welcome. =)
1 answer