A complex sentence

[hhtt21]

There had been tears in those eyes when Matthew was nearing his end, and Kemp had felt it as an insult, this grief for
his cousin, who had led the crew in mutiny and murder and piracy, an insult to the high sense of justice that had taken
him halfway across the world to bring these men to account for their crimes, his cousin chief among them, and so avenge
the father who had hanged himself rather than face the shame of bankruptcy.

It is hard for me to understand this complex sentence. Does not this sentence have a strange grammar. It's like instead of dots, commas are used.

Thank you.

 

[Lynxear]

This is not a complex sentence really. It is a run-on sentence.

You should never create a sentence that is almost a paragraph of information. This example that can be easily broken down into simpler sentences

There had been tears in those eyes when Matthew was nearing his end. Kemp felt it was an insult, this grief for his cousin, who had led the crew in mutiny, murder and piracy. An insult to the high sense of justice that had taken him halfway across the world to bring these men to account for their crimes and avenge the father who had hanged himself rather than face the shame of bankruptcy.

As you can see I have broken down this run on sentence , making 3 complex sentences. I also eliminated "his cousin chief among him". That is superfluous as you already know he was the leader of the mutinous crew.

 

[Lynxear]

ok...it is not a run-on sentence because it contains conjunctions so technically I suppose this is a legitimate sentence. But I have not seen a technical term in English that describes multiple sentences that are fused together making them almost unreadable. So I tend to call them run-on sentences in lieu of a technical term to describe the situation.

The solution is the same in either case,as you agree. Breakup that monster into smaller, easy to read sentences.

 

[emsr2d2]

Given the contents of a recent thread by Bassim, we can certainly say that this writer has a prolix style! ;-)

 

[hhtt21]

OK, but it is, in my opinion, not helpful to learners using this forum to use an incorrect label.

I think helpful because I took more than 8 years of English lessons or lectures but I have never heard of run-on sentence.

Thank you.