What is 'the' summer here, not 'a' summer?
He knew that after the five weeks or so I was starting to get lonely, and since his Teach for America training had just ended and he had the rest of the summer to kill before starting in September, he surprised me in Amsterdam. I'd covered most of Europe by then and he'd traveled "the summer" before, so after a not-so-sober afternoon at one of the coffee shops, we pooled our traveler's checks and bought two one-way tickets to Bangkok.
-This is part of a novel and I don't understand what the author means by 'the' summer in the context above. Could you please help?
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Answers · 4
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He says "the" summer and not "a" summer because he's talking about a specific summer-the one before. When you're talking about a specific thing you must use "the" and when you're talking about a general thing it's "a". Though most of the time when talking about seasons you will use "the" instead of "a", unless you're trying to describe it- for example you might say "It was a hot summer."
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