Re: John galumphs twice


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Posted by Peter Ceresole on April 17, 2007 at 09:01:54 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.

In Reply to: Re: John galumphs twice posted by Jock on April 17, 2007 at 08:01:51:

"Galumphing, which is partly jumping and partly galloping, is a quick way of going down hill.
It was such a quick way that Able-seaman Titty and the boy Roger passed the patteran and the bent and tied hazel branches without seeing them. Captain John passed them too. He was wandering what he ought to do about warning the retired pirate about putting a padlock on his houseboat. What would the Amazons say about it? If Captain Nancy wanted to seize the houseboat by a surprise attack when the pirate was somewhere ashore, she would certainly rather it were not locked up. Captain John galumphed half-heartedly. Ought he have told the two Billies that they were talking not to friends but to enemies of the houseboat man who, for the moment at least, was not the Blackett lasses' uncle Jim, but Captain Flint, against whom Amazons and Swallows had concluded a solemn alliance. He galumphed half- heartedly." Then the galumphing continues in the same vein for another seven lines...

It seems to me that the repetition of John 'galumphing half heartedly' is a nice literary device, certainly deliberate; it gives a spine to the account of John's continuing thoughts as he galumphs, and emphasises that it's not a quick thought but an obsessive stream. I think it's s splendid passage.


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