0

I would like to ask two questions regarding the following sentence:

There was a moment next of such confusion that I did not see what happened to Riquette, for the sight of my companion kneeling on the dusty boards and praying with a curious sort of passionate happiness, while tears pressed between her covering fingers—the strange wonder of this made me utterly oblivious to minor details.

  1. Is "next" adverb here? I am unsure of the meaning when placed like that.
  2. Is "for" here the conjuction, meaning "because/since"? I thought so, but then I realized the sentence sounds somehow incomplete.
Improve this question
1
  • Yes, there is a 'disconnect' in the sentence, as though the writer were speaking and had slightly lost their thread. However, expressing it logically would have made the sentence even more difficult to understand. For the strange wonder of the sight of my companion kneeling (...) made me utterly oblivious to minor details.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 11:21

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

There was a moment next of such confusion that I did not see what happened to Riquette, [...]

I believe next is a pronoun here. The author is referring to the exact next moment after his/her narration when the incident(confusion) took place. Source

[...] what happened to Riquette, for the sight of my companion kneeling on the dusty boards [...]

for is acting, as you presumed, like a conjunction here. Its meaning are, because; as. Source

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .