いく筋も/うねるように

[eeky]

Hi,


1. ボンネットから蒸気がいく筋もシューシュー噴き出している。

Is this いく as in 行く? Does 蒸気がいく modify 筋? It seems semantically slightly odd to me.


2. ひしゃげた車のボンネットの中から、蒸気がうねるように噴き出している。

a) Is うねるように adverbial modifying 蒸気が噴き出している? I don't really understand why ように is appropriate. Isn't 蒸気がうねる exactly what is happening?

b) Most of the narrative sentences in this book are past tense. Every so often, for no reason that I can see, a present-tense sentence is inserted, like this one and the previous. What could be the explanation for this?

 

[nekojita]

いく筋も means there are a number of thin streams/threads (think like plane vaportrails) of steam escaping. いく is 幾 here.

I've had the tense changes explained to me as present-tense feeling more "immediate" (in this case, more "oh cr*p", I guess). A mix of tenses is not uncommon.

 

[Toritoribe]

2) a)
蒸気が噴き出している is what is happening and what the writer want to say.

2) b)
The present tense has an effect to give readers 臨場感 "the feelings/sense as if they were in the place". It's often used in novels, as nekojita-san wrote.

 

[eeky]

Thank you both...

蒸気が噴き出している is what is happening and what the writer want to say.

Right, I understand (or assumed) that this is the core of the sentence. So I assumed that うねるように was adverbial and modifying that. Is that right?

The difficulty I have with ように is that, AFAIK, it is normally used when one thing is like another or "as if" another. In this case it does not seem to me that うねる is "as if". Instead, it seems that うねる is literally describing what is happening.

 

[Toritoribe]

Just because うねる is usually not used to describe a state/movement of steam.

 

[eeky]

Oh, I see, thanks.