Tell It “in Tense”

From Twitter:

この文章を同じ時制で終わらせますか。A man grows evil. His wife sends their son and daughter to live with different families. Later, the son meets an old knight; they travel to save a princess. The son…

a. discovered she’s his sister.
b. finds she’s his sister.
c. marries her.

There are two possible answers here, if we want to satisfy the quiz guideline of remaining in the same tense, but one does not fit the story (and is also terrible).

When we tell a story, a joke, or what happened–we usually use the same tense (the time frame for the action and “be verbs”)–until we can’t any longer because, we must change it to express the past or future or the present continuous. This is especially true when telling the narrative of a novel, a movie or a proverb. I think the reason is–the story exists forever in our imagination, perhaps in our tradition; we will tell the story or joke or anecdote over and over. So in a sense, it doesn’t happen only once; it’s not “history”, exactly–and even if it is, when we retell it and retell it, it is timeless.

By the way, today’s tweet is a story most of us know–from a famous science fiction movie series. Do you recognize it?

CA

Author: sayinsei

英語の発音矯正と会話クラスを提供する新宿の語学学校. A language school in Shinjuku offering English classes

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