I think the author made it easy to see she’s referring to Hank Rearden when one of the names are brought up. I don’t remember seeing the name Rearden and being confused if it’s referring to his wife Lillian, his brother Phillip, or his mom.
Oh, obviously “Rearden” could refer to his family members. It’s a shorthand to “Hank Rearden” only when it actually refers to Hank. Silly mistake by me.
Was it a mistake? Im thinking probably people who are ok at reading and writing can pick up:
without having it stated to them directly. I think im inexperienced at how to reference specific people by the use of their last name in a book or essay
What I wrote is still objectively wrong even if readers can understand what I meant or fix my mistake. If you look at:
It’s not like it was taken out of context. That statement is just wrong.
We should minimize how much readers have to guess and rely on social interpretation of our text. We should make our meaning clear through an objective reading of text.
This statement could be true tho, like if no one in the book is called “Hank”, then thats one part of your statement thats right. If no one else in Hank’s family was referred to by the use of only “Rearden” then thats the other part of your statement being right.
If the subordinate clause of your sentence is right then I think that means the author meant for this:
to be right.
That’s right actually. From memory I think “Rearden” alone is only ever used for Hank. So saying “in AS” might make the statement correct. That may be what I thought when I wrote it originally as well. When I reread it I thought that what I had in mind was that “Hank” or “Rearden” in general meant “Hank Rearden.” I thought I confused/mixed up the specific case and the general case.
Oh ok, I think since you had clarify to me this:
it mightve seen like something from your previous statement was wrong, but i dont think so. I think im not that good at reading between the lines with text analysis so it kind of hard me to pick up on some things working in the background.
Really, on the subject we’re on right now though(meta discussion?), I think it’s hard. I feel like I might be very wrong with what im saying
I’m a bit confused about what you’re talking about here. “Had to clarify to me this” has grammar/typo error. Also, I think you meant “seem” instead of “seen.”
Is previous statement referring to this?
If so, then at the time of writing:
I thought there was a mistake in “previous statement.” Now, without checking AS I think it’s likely true.
So meta discussion is discussion about discussion. When I was talking about whether I made an error it wasn’t meta discussion. But In these two posts we’re doing meta discussion.
Yeah that one sorry
Yeah thats what i meant.
I think I disagree but I dont know how to discuss this point further.
I don’t know if the last two posts before this one were the only meta discussion posts. I dont think I know what meta discussion actually is. Im sorry for bringing it up.
Sorry im having trouble with using “this” in the quote above. It’s really difficult sorry. I think I need to practice using “this” more
You’re doing fine.
Ok that sounds good. I think i need short break. Im feeling emotional. Thank you
In the quote above, when you say:
do you mean any “Hank” or “Rearden”? Like one of names could be someone’s irl name or it could be the name of a landmark or even the name of an entirely different character in a different novel?
Yes. But now I think that quote wasn’t what I thought when I reread it either. I think what I thought when I reread was that “Rearden” could be used for his family members in AS.
Now I’m trying to talk about what I thought at different times, which is getting complicated to follow and hard for me to remember.
Is this disrupting your practicing? This isn’t an important tangent, not for me at least and I guess not for you either. You don’t have to reply. I’m happy to chat though.
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Ohhhh ok I think I get what you’re saying. When you reread, “Rearden” seemed like it could be used to also refer to his family members.
I see. I know this is kind of different but for me it’s kind of hard to remember and look back for one our quotes and continue the convo. I think this is related to trees and how when one of us brings up a point, it makes a new child node. The child node could be the child of a leaf node or maybe even the root node? it’s hard to visualize
I don’t think so. I think I’m getting practice for how to post on the forum and getting more literary and conversation practice. I think those will help with learning what the book is saying.
I think an interesting thing to practice could be to recognize what is meta discussion here. I didn’t analyze much when I wrote:
So there might be more or less meta discussion. I would be interested in analyzing myself and discussing it with you. If you’re interested would you like to go first?
We could practice by making a discussion tree as well.
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Yeah, I’ll post something later tonight. I think I’ll try to start small in a way like something that satisfies the criteria of a meta discussion
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I’m gonna try going over certain quotes and see if I can say yes, no, or idk that something counts as meta discussion:
Quote #1:
Idk, the quote above is talking about how characters are referred to in a book. The quote is a response to me trying to make “Hank Rearden” into a single node in a grammar tree:
Quote #2:
Idk, but it’s interesting that @ActiveMind says
, cuz I see the words “tells you” and “talking about”. I know ‘which x we are talking about’ is a figure of speech, but it sounds like how do we know we are talking about the right person in a conversation? I don’t know if a grammar tree counts as a conversation.
Quote #3:
Idk. Does a book count as a discussion? Like is the author discussing something with the reader?
edit: Maybe we should make another thread for this? Also for the discussion tree practice?
A leaf node has no children by definition. If you trace a path downwards a tree the path would end at a leaf node.