[Vocabulary] what does "engine missing turns" mean?

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sherishine

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The plane came out of the sand. There had been no food and I was weak. The tarp so heavy I couldn’t dig it out but had simply to cut it away. In the morning, after two hours’ sleep, I carried her into the cockpit. I started the motor and it rolled into life. We moved and then slipped, years too late, into the sky.

The voice stops. The burned man looks straight ahead in his morphine focus.

The plane is now in his eye. The slow voice carries it with effort above the earth, the engine missing turns as if losing a stitch, her shroud unfurling in the noisy air of the cockpit, noise terrible after his days of walking in silence. He looks down and sees oil pouring onto his knees. A branch breaks free of her shirt. Acacia and bone. How high is he above the land? How low is he in the sky?


The undercarriage brushes the top of a palm and he pivots up, and the oil slides over the seat, her body slipping down into it. There is a spark from a short, and the twigs at her knee catch fire. He pulls her back into the seat beside him. He thrusts his hands up against the cockpit glass and it will not shift. Begins punching the glass, cracking it, finally breaking it, and the oil and the fire slop and spin everywhere. How low is he in the sky? She collapses—acacia twigs, leaves, the branches that were shaped into arms uncoiling around him. Limbs begin disappearing in the suck of air. The odour of morphine on his tongue. Caravaggio reflected in the black lake of his eye. He goes up and down now like a well bucket. There is blood somehow all over his face. He is flying a rotted plane, the canvas sheetings on the wings ripping open in the speed. They are carrion. How far back had the palm tree been? How long ago? He lifts his legs out of the oil, but they are so heavy. There is no way he can lift them again. He is old. Suddenly. Tired of living without her. He cannot lie back in her arms and trust her to stand guard all day all night while he sleeps. He has no one. He is exhausted not from the desert but from solitude. Madox gone. The woman translated into leaves and twigs, the broken glass to the sky like a jaw above him.

:?:

what does" missing turns" mean? And what about"losing a stitch"?
 
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Barb_D

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I am having a hard time understanding this passage at all.
 

sherishine

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Dear Barb,

Thank you for your thread!

I have added more text, hope it would be helpful.
 

bhaisahab

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I am having a hard time understanding this passage at all.
To understand it you'd have to read the whole book, Barb, it's from "The English Patient" by Micheal Ondaatje. It's a book that has to be read from cover to cover, you can't make sense of snippets taken from it.
 

bhaisahab

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The plane came out of the sand. There had been no food and I was weak. The tarp so heavy I couldn’t dig it out but had simply to cut it away. In the morning, after two hours’ sleep, I carried her into the cockpit. I started the motor and it rolled into life. We moved and then slipped, years too late, into the sky.

The voice stops. The burned man looks straight ahead in his morphine focus.

The plane is now in his eye. The slow voice carries it with effort above the earth, the engine missing turns as if losing a stitch, her shroud unfurling in the noisy air of the cockpit, noise terrible after his days of walking in silence. He looks down and sees oil pouring onto his knees. A branch breaks free of her shirt. Acacia and bone. How high is he above the land? How low is he in the sky?


The undercarriage brushes the top of a palm and he pivots up, and the oil slides over the seat, her body slipping down into it. There is a spark from a short, and the twigs at her knee catch fire. He pulls her back into the seat beside him. He thrusts his hands up against the cockpit glass and it will not shift. Begins punching the glass, cracking it, finally breaking it, and the oil and the fire slop and spin everywhere. How low is he in the sky? She collapses—acacia twigs, leaves, the branches that were shaped into arms uncoiling around him. Limbs begin disappearing in the suck of air. The odour of morphine on his tongue. Caravaggio reflected in the black lake of his eye. He goes up and down now like a well bucket. There is blood somehow all over his face. He is flying a rotted plane, the canvas sheetings on the wings ripping open in the speed. They are carrion. How far back had the palm tree been? How long ago? He lifts his legs out of the oil, but they are so heavy. There is no way he can lift them again. He is old. Suddenly. Tired of living without her. He cannot lie back in her arms and trust her to stand guard all day all night while he sleeps. He has no one. He is exhausted not from the desert but from solitude. Madox gone. The woman translated into leaves and twigs, the broken glass to the sky like a jaw above him.

:?:

what does" missing turns" mean? And what about"losing a stitch"?
The engine "missing turns" means it is faltering, misfiring. "As if losing a stitch", here the author is making an analogy with someone losing concentration while knitting, resulting in breaks in the continuity of the stitches.
 

Barb_D

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Ah, well, I saw the movie. It was visually beautiful. I guess they did a good job of translating the author's words into a visual portrait.

Thanks
 

sherishine

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The engine "missing turns" means it is faltering, misfiring. "As if losing a stitch", here the author is making an analogy with someone losing concentration while knitting, resulting in breaks in the continuity of the stitches.



Thank you Bhaisahab,

The author indeed prefer metaphors, sometimes not that easy for me to understand.Bhaisahab, have you read this book? What 's the main difficulties you've come across in it?

And could I ask you one more question? What 's your understanding on this sentence? "A branch breaks free of her shirt. Acacia and bone."
Is that mean, a branch of acacia breaks, and falls onto his shirt? I think Acacia is a hint, which refers to the lost Zerzura, but I don't understand the "bone"here.

And I feel totally at sea about this sentence ,"Limbs begin disappearing in the suck of air".

O(∩_∩)O~

Thank you.
 

bhaisahab

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Thank you Bhaisahab,

The author indeed prefer metaphors, sometimes not that easy for me to understand.Bhaisahab, have you read this book? What 's the main difficulties you've come across in it?

And could I ask you one more question? What 's your understanding on this sentence? "A branch breaks free of her shirt. Acacia and bone."
Is that mean, a branch of acacia breaks, and falls onto his shirt? I think Acacia is a hint, which refers to the lost Zerzura, but I don't understand the "bone"here.

And I feel totally at sea about this sentence ,"Limbs begin disappearing in the suck of air".

O(∩_∩)O~

Thank you.
Yes, I have read the book, but it was a long time ago and I don't have a copy of it now. As far as I remember, all that remains of her body is a skeleton inside rags of clothing. Her skeleton starts to come apart in the air flow around the plane.
 

sherishine

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Thank you BhaisahabO(∩_∩)O~
 
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