Readers can focus on verb tenses to determine the time frame of a story. Mark the verbs in paragraphs 45 and 46 that reveal the time frame. Is there a clue in how the words are spelled? Why do you think the author has switched verb tenses here?


At the end of the year I pleaded with my parents to let me move to

another town. I couldn’t go on living in sight of the beach where K.

had been swept away, and my nightmares wouldn’t stop. If I didn’t

get out of there, I’d go crazy. My parents understood and made

arrangements for me to live elsewhere. I moved to Nagano Province

in January to live with my father’s family in a mountain village near

Komoro. I finished elementary school in Nagano and stayed on

through junior and senior high school there. I never went home, even

for holidays. My parents came to visit me now and then.


I live in Nagano to this day. I graduated from a college of

engineering in the City of Nagano and went to work for a precision

toolmaker in the area. I still work for them. I live like anybody else.

As you can see, there’s nothing unusual about me. I’m not very

sociable, but I have a few friends I go mountain climbing with. Once

I got away from my home town, I stopped having nightmares all

the time. They remained a part of my life, though. They would come

to me now and then, like debt collectors at the door. It happened

whenever I was on the verge of forgetting. And it was always

the same dream, down to the smallest detail. I would wake up

screaming, my sheets soaked with sweat.


The story is "The Seventh Man" by Haruki Murakami