A few question about the meaning of a questionable phrase
A few question about the meaning of a questionable phrase
The passage below is from Fathoms: The World in the Whale Hardcover by Rebecca Giggs.
‘Something is everywhere and always amiss … It is as though each clay form had baked into it, fired into it, a blue streak of nonbeing.’ The blue streak of mortality: this was what Dillard was referring to. Yet whale worms, whale lice, whalesuckers are nonbeings too, set against the whale, the massive being that is their birthplace, habitat, and the genesis of their labour. For parasites are very like death: the faceless thing amiss, everywhere, finding purchase in even the most enfolded, sunless surfaces. Long considered indicative of sickness, derangement, and decline, the most unnerving quality of any parasite is its profuse, persistent vitality, the wiggling in the womb, the itch on the skin, clinging, consuming, breeding. Worse than a ghost somehow. A parasite will typically reproduce faster than its host, and may exist in greater plenitude; the million-faced beast upon the beast. Being more profoundly alive, according to these measures, than their hosts, parasites can, in contrast, make the larger animal itself seem ghostly and partial — for less of it consists of itself.
I have a few questions about the underlined phrase.
All through the passage the author shows distaste for parasites.
Reaching the last sentence, she decries parasites for making their host seem inferior being.
And then with dash comes a questionable phrase.
First, the meaning of ‘for’
I think it means ‘because’.
(Am I right?)
Second, what does the ‘it’ represent?
To me ‘it’ refers to the larger animal, that is the host.
(Am I right?)
Next, what does the ‘itself’ represent?
To me ‘itself’ also stands for the host.
(Am I right?)
Last and foremost, even though I think I know what ‘consist of’ means very well, I cannot get the meaning of ‘for less of it consists of itself’.
Can you tell me where I am wrong, or what I miss on this weird phrase?
Top answer
You are right in all three cases. "less of it consists of itself" means that less of the substance, or apparent substance, of the host animal (the larger animal) is actually the host animal itself, because some of the substance is parasites.
- You are right in all three cases.
- "less of it consists of itself" means that less of the substance, or apparent substance, of the host animal (the larger animal) is actually the host animal itself, because some of the substance is parasites.
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You are right in all three cases.
"less of it consists of itself" means that less of the substance, or apparent substance, of the host animal (the larger animal) is actually the host animal itself, because some of the substance is parasites.
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