Johnyxxx
Senior Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2014
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Czech
- Home Country
- Czech Republic
- Current Location
- Czech Republic
Hello,
Can anybody tell me if the word frightening is used correctly in the sentence? I cannot help mysel but it sounds strange, I would expect hard would fit much more. And to tell the truth, the whole sentence containing the word in question seems to me to be a little confused ...
She reflected a minute, leaning on her broom and staring at the ceiling. “Well,” this came slowly, “ ’bout a week ago he had it turned on one evening when I was washin’ the supper dishes. I could hear it plain enough, even clear down in the kitchen. An’ it sounded then like it might have been voices. Only there was too many of them at once to make out anything separate. If you’ve heard the people cheerin’ at a football broadcast, you’ll get the general idea of what I mean.”
“I see.” It was absurd how hard my heart was still hammering. For a moment I had been imagining something ridiculous and outside the bounds of sense. I felt ashamed of having given credence, even for an instant, to the thought that Julian might, indeed, have done what he claimed to be on the point of accomplishing. Even that instant’s belief had showed me how frightening it would be to believe that he was not deluded. To let the world of the dead back in upon the living was a conception so horrible that I was shaken—a blasphemy more frightening than anything the theologians had ever conceived... . And then I was smiling to myself as I understood what it was she had really heard.
That humming, that confused murmur—it was obviously nothing but tubes heterodyning in some way. Perhaps there had been an aurora borealis that night— it seemed to me that I’d heard it did funny things to all sorts of electric apparatus. If the thing made a noise, as Mrs Marcy said, it was a noise which it induced itself. Yes, I told myself, there was no doubt that was what she had heard.
William Sloane, Edge of Running Water, 1939.
Thanks a lot.
Can anybody tell me if the word frightening is used correctly in the sentence? I cannot help mysel but it sounds strange, I would expect hard would fit much more. And to tell the truth, the whole sentence containing the word in question seems to me to be a little confused ...
She reflected a minute, leaning on her broom and staring at the ceiling. “Well,” this came slowly, “ ’bout a week ago he had it turned on one evening when I was washin’ the supper dishes. I could hear it plain enough, even clear down in the kitchen. An’ it sounded then like it might have been voices. Only there was too many of them at once to make out anything separate. If you’ve heard the people cheerin’ at a football broadcast, you’ll get the general idea of what I mean.”
“I see.” It was absurd how hard my heart was still hammering. For a moment I had been imagining something ridiculous and outside the bounds of sense. I felt ashamed of having given credence, even for an instant, to the thought that Julian might, indeed, have done what he claimed to be on the point of accomplishing. Even that instant’s belief had showed me how frightening it would be to believe that he was not deluded. To let the world of the dead back in upon the living was a conception so horrible that I was shaken—a blasphemy more frightening than anything the theologians had ever conceived... . And then I was smiling to myself as I understood what it was she had really heard.
That humming, that confused murmur—it was obviously nothing but tubes heterodyning in some way. Perhaps there had been an aurora borealis that night— it seemed to me that I’d heard it did funny things to all sorts of electric apparatus. If the thing made a noise, as Mrs Marcy said, it was a noise which it induced itself. Yes, I told myself, there was no doubt that was what she had heard.
William Sloane, Edge of Running Water, 1939.
Thanks a lot.
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