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Book mango 418 Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Pulsing gently with the swells

Hello Everyone:

“And this feeling of moving with the earth was somewhat like the feeling of being in the ocean, out in the ocean beyond this rising and falling of the breakers, lying on the moving water, pulsing gently with the swells, and feeling the gentle, inexorable tug of the moon.

I am asleep; I am dreaming, she thought. I'm having a nightmare. I want to wake up. Let me wake up.

"Well!" Charles Wallace's voice said. "That was quite a trip! I do think you might have warned us."

Light began to pulse and quiver. Meg blinked and shoved shakily at her glasses and there was Charles Wallace......"


From A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle


Meg is describing her experience of being tessered.


I don't understand pulse in "pulsing gently with the swells" and "pulse and quiver". In the first case, because the swells rise and fall and Meg is lying on the water, she also rises and falls, so pulsing? In the second case, as Meg opened her eyes, she felt the light trembling? What is the difference between pulse and quiver here?



I would appreciate it if you would comment.


BM418

  

Top answer

pulse s uggests regularly repeated movement. It's not hard to understand how you would feel this as the ocean moves gently under you. It sounds to me like flickering.

— Clive

  • pulse s uggests regularly repeated movement.
  • It's not hard to understand how you would feel this as the ocean moves gently under you.
  • It sounds to me like flickering.
  • But you'd probably have to undergo Tessering yourself to really understand what this means.
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2 Answers
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pulse suggests regularly repeated movement. It's not hard to understand how you would feel this as the ocean moves gently under you.

Light began to pulse and quiver.It sounds to me like flickering. But you'd probably have to undergo Tessering yourself to really understand what this means.

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My guess is that it is a deliberate choice by the writer to use the same word twice, a word we also use for the human heartbeat. So, it's good that you noticed.

We also have "pulsate," but the author didn't use that word; its more for external objects.

in this Smart Thesaurus, pulse is a distant synonym for pulsate:


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