Past perfect

Question

I'll post just a little part of a book that I'm reading.
____

"Oh, please," said Meredith.
"And Matt-that boy is simply poetry in motion..."
"And neither of them is mine," Elena said flatly. Under Meredith's expert fingers, her hair was becoming a work of art, a soft mass of twisted gold. And the dress was all right; the iced-violet color brought out the violet in her eyes. But even to herself she looked pale and steely, not softly flushed with excitement but white and determined, like a very young soldier being sent to the front lines.
Standing on the football field yesterday when her name was announced as Homecoming Queen, there had been only one thought in her mind. He couldn't refuse to dance with her. If he came to the dance at all, he couldn't refuse the Homecoming Queen. And standing in front of the mirror now, she said it to herself again.

Did the writer use perfect past because he didn't consider the blue day the same way as the red one?
Is there any difference in using perfect past when writing a book and in "real life"? Writer almost always use it to distinguish times in the past, while we don't always use do that. Especially when the sequence of events is clear?
If he came to the dance at all, he couldn't refuse the Homecoming Queen. - Is this the second conditional and what does the sentence mean here?

Faximili · Accepted Answer

Hi whatchadoin! I'll try and answer you as best I can, but I don't know what a "second conditional" is.

To your first question: yes. If you rewrote the blue paragraph with the simple past, it would sound like it was happening at the same time as the red paragraph. We often use the perfect to simply mean "even more past." Perfect past here is used to indicate something happening even before the simple past being used in the red paragraph. The introduction "Standing on the football field yesterday..." makes it clear (so it wouldn't be wrong the other way), but I would definitely have to read the blue paragraph again to make sure I understood correctly if not for the change in tense.

As for speaking versus writing: usually, when speaking, we use the present tense, so the past perfect only gets used if we want to emphasize that something happened a long time ago, or to emphasize the sequence of things. I might say, "We had made reservations, but the waitress said our name wasn't on the list!" But it sounds fine as "We made reservations, but the waitress said our name wasn't on the list!" Sequence is clear from context.

"If he came to the dance at all, he couldn't refuse the Homecoming Queen." What an awesome sentence. It works really well with the soldier imagery in the paragraph above. It feels very absolute and militant. Here the sentence means: "The only way he could possibly not dance with her is if he simply doesn't show up. By coming to the dance, he is obligated to dance with the Homecoming Queen." Here, the obligation is simply imagined (or at least drastically overstated)--there would be nothing terribly weird about not dancing with the Homecoming Queen. But, in theory, what every boy wants is to dance with the Homecoming Queen, so she imagines that he would have to dance with her.

~F

Anonymous · Answer

In novels, the descriptive text (the red text) is typically in the past tense, as the writer is describing past events - a novel by definition cannot describe events in the present time. However, the dialog in a novel is in the present tense, as the writer is reproducing the dialog as it was at the time.

Sometimes the descriptive text will have to shift temporarily to past events (the first part of the blue text), that is, events at a time before the general descriptive text. Then the past perfect would be used, as the past perfect describes completed action in the past: "yesterday there had been only one thought in her mind." So you have "the past of the past": the general text is past tense, and any descriptions of events prior to the general text is therefore past perfect.

But then the blue text switches back to past tense after that initial excursion in the "past of the past." For example: "If he came to the dance at all, he couldn't refuse the Homecoming Queen." The verbs "came" and "could" are past tense forms of "come" and "can," respectively. This boy Matt is apparently the most desirable in the class, so even the Homecoming Queen has no lock on him - he's so much in demand that he could be standoffish even with the Homecoming Queen. Elena is stuck on him and he apparently doesn't feel the same way. But now that she's Homecoming Queen, literally royalty for a day at school, she's thinking that Matt - if he even comes to the homecoming dance, no guarantee of that for such an in-demand guy - if she pulls him onto the dance floor, would have to dance with her, she being the Homecoming Queen.

Past perfect

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