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JKBelieve Posted 20 years ago
Grammar
An undecipherable passage from 'Brave New World' by Huxley
Hey how u guys doin! I began reading 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley and I have an inconmprehensible passage from the first page...
'Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory'
I'm not quite sure what it's saying, especially the first sentence. Thanks everyone ^^
'Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory'
I'm not quite sure what it's saying, especially the first sentence. Thanks everyone ^^
Top answer
JKBelieve Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory disclaimer: i haven't read the book. 'for' here i think means 'in spite of', so despite the ostensible heat - the summer weather outside, the uncomfortable temperature stereotypical of laboratories - there is a chill in the air, there is not the warmth of humankind. the whole sentence sounds like a longwinded way of saying there was nobody about.
- JKBelieve Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory disclaimer: i haven't read the book.
- 'for' here i think means 'in spite of', so despite the ostensible heat - the summer weather outside, the uncomfortable temperature stereotypical of laboratories - there is a chill in the air, there is not the warmth of humankind.
- the whole sentence sounds like a longwinded way of saying there was nobody about.
- sam
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8 Answers
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JKBelieveCold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory
disclaimer: i haven't read the book.
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Here's the whole paragraph. I believe it is an attempt to show how 'psychologically cold' the laboratory is, despite the fact that the temperature in the room is hot and the light coming through the windows is summer light.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room i
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room i
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Can you expalin more precisely the last sentence that is "streak after streak in long recession down the work table"
Is'nt recession economical term? I don't get it.
Is'nt recession economical term? I don't get it.
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Not undeciperhable, but certainly difficult to decipher!
The light is cold despite ("for all") the summer outside the room and the tropical heat inside it.
Not only is it cold, it is hungry for some vestige of humanity, be it the manikin ("draped lay figure") it might encounter in a store window or a shivering student glimpsed through a college window. However, even these poor sp
The light is cold despite ("for all") the summer outside the room and the tropical heat inside it.
Not only is it cold, it is hungry for some vestige of humanity, be it the manikin ("draped lay figure") it might encounter in a store window or a shivering student glimpsed through a college window. However, even these poor sp
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The author is apparently saying that the room is on the north side of the building - thus all the windows face north - which is the coldest side of the building. The sun will never directly shine through these north-facing windows, even in the summertime. The room itself is kept heated to an almost tropical temperature - yet the light that comes through the window is always a cold light.
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It is saying that despite the heat outside and even the tropical warmth of the room itself, there is a chill in the environment because if the harsh lights and the glaringly white surroundings. And yes the room is empty.
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