[Grammar] A matter of the past perfect tense

[Denisius]

Ahoy all! I have a sentence here: "The country was partitioned, and in the general confusion that was caused, millions of closest friends, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and sweethearts had got separated from each other.", and I'm curious why did the author use the past perfect form of the verb get in this part "had got separated" while it's describing things happened after the event of partitioning the country, and the main purpose of the past perfect tense is to emphasize that something in the past occured before some other event. So was it a grammatical mistake or I haven't grasped something about the past perfect tense?

 

[Tarheel]

I would delete two things from the text. One of them would be the "had" in "had got separated".

 

[emsr2d2]

[STRIKE]Ahoy all! [/STRIKE] Unnatural and unnecessary I have a query about this sentence [STRIKE]here[/STRIKE]: "The country was partitioned, and in the general confusion that [STRIKE]was caused,[/STRIKE] ensued, millions of [STRIKE]closest[/STRIKE] close friends, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and sweethearts [STRIKE]had got[/STRIKE] were separated from each other." [STRIKE]and[/STRIKE] I'm curious about why [STRIKE]did[/STRIKE] the author used the past perfect form of the verb "get" in [STRIKE]this part[/STRIKE] "had got separated" while it's describing things that happened after the [STRIKE]event of[/STRIKE] partitioning of the country. [STRIKE]and[/STRIKE] I think that the main purpose of the past perfect tense is to emphasize that something in the past occurred before some other event. So was it a grammatical mistake or have I not [STRIKE]haven't[/STRIKE] grasped something about the past perfect tense?

See above.

 

[Tarheel]

Please pay close attention to ems's corrections.

 

[Raymott]

Because the answer is likely to be in the next sentence. "They had got separated". Then something happened.
"They had got separated" is not good, but that's another point.