Hi,
Could you please help me with the following passages concerning ‘as’?
Aarfy was a dedicated fraternity man who loved cheerleading and class reunions and did not have brains enough to be afraid, Yossarian did have brains enough and was, and the only thing that stopped him from abandoning his post under fire and scurrying back through the crawlway like a yellow-bellied rat was his unwillingness to entrust the evasive action out of the target area to anybody else. There was nobody else in the world he would honor with so great a responsibility. There was nobody else he knew who was as big a coward . Yossarian was the best man in the group at evasive action, but had no idea why.
Is it an abbreviation for: there was nobody else he knew who was as big a coward as himself?
“Help who? Help who?” called back Yossarian, once he had plugged his headset back into the intercom system, after it had been jerked out when Dobbs wrested the controls away from Huple and hurled them all down suddenly into the deafening, paralyzing, horrifying dive which had plastered Yossarian helplessly to the ceiling of the plane by the top of his head and from which Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the controls back from Dobbs and leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully only a moment before. Oh, God! Oh, God, oh, God, Yossarian had been pleading wordlessly as he dangled from the ceiling of the nose of the ship by the top of his head, unable to move.
Does it mean: as suddenly right back as could be?
Thank you!
Haihao
Alan
May 29, 2007, 10:32am
2
Hi Haihao,
Both your quotations refer I believe to comparisons -as big a coward as he was
In the second one, as suddenly refers back I would have thought to:
. In other words the ‘sudden’ manner refers to both actions.
Alan
Haihao
May 29, 2007, 10:07pm
3
Good morning Alan,
Thank you very much indeed for your interpretation that eased every piece of my uneasiness for the writing. I also found out from it my problem of lack in holding the whole picture for an article/story caused by just running after the sentences.
Haihao