Would you mind looking at the first sentence in the context?
Would you mind looking at the first sentence in the context?
As to the phrase ‘unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade’, I think it is unusual that the word ‘near’ is collocated with the preposition ‘of’. Would it be more usual if the author used the word ‘to’, instead of ‘of’, here? Thank you.

PS: The context is taken from ‘To-morrow’ written by Joseph Conrad.
the context:
The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade, said seriously: 'I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I fancy there's something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come in.'

Question

Would you mind looking at the first sentence in the context?
Would you mind looking at the first sentence in the context?
As to the phrase ‘unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade’, I think it is unusual that the word ‘near’ is collocated with the preposition ‘of’. Would it be more usual if the author used the word ‘to’, instead of ‘of’, here? Thank you.

PS: The context is taken from ‘To-morrow’ written by Joseph Conrad.
the context:
The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade, said seriously: 'I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I fancy there's something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come in.'

Answer

I tend to agree with you because that sounds a little awkward to me.  I would have written "unaware of how how near he was to having his head laid open".  "of" needs to be in the sentence to express "unaware of" but it does seem a little out of place.  Having said that, we have to consider that this was written more than 100 years ago when they may have said things just a little bit differently.  Whatever the case, I don't think that Conrad got it wrong.  He's a much better writer than I'll ever be.

Answer

I believe that the preposition "of" is used because we have "unaware". You don't use "unaware to". :-) There may be some other explanations though.

Answers · 3

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