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My leg burned and was angry from the lead ball that was lodged in it just above my knee. I felt sleepy and everything would go black. Then I'd wake up again. I wanted to go back to our farm in Ohio and sometimes, When I'd fall into one of them strange sleeps, I'd be there with my Ma, tastin' baking powder biscuits fresh out of her wood stove.

In that paragraph does "would" stand as conditional or future in the past or something the character did many times I think the third answer is the good one.

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  • What is the source? It is hard to tell if this is a narrative of actual or imagined events. I don't think your question can be answered without additional context.
    – user3169
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 22:26
  • PINK and SAY by Patricia Polacco
    – Yves Lefol
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 3:35

1 Answer 1

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The narrator is describing a sequence of events that is repeated. Although it's not explicit, the use of 'would' implies that everything went black more than once. When s/he then says

"Then I'd wake up again."

we can understand it to mean

"Then I would wake up again."

If s/he were narrating everything explicitly s/he might say

"Everything went black. Then I woke up again. Then everything went black. Then I woke up again."

But the way s/he uses 'would' in this sentence allows him or her to describe each event only once while giving us the understanding that it happened more than once.

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