Are the tenses of the following piece correct? [closed]
Closed by System on Mar 4, 2015 at 06:10
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I almost drowned in the this ocean of tenses. Anyhow, did I make any mistake?
It was almost two, so I said goodnight to Mom and went back to my room. Once on my bed, I took the gold tooth out of its box and held it up to the ceiling light. My great-great-grandmother had died in her attempt to become immortal, just like many others throughout history. Emperors, dictators, merchants, scientists—they all drowned in the sea of their obsession. But let's say they achieved their goal and became immortal. What good would that have been? Qin Shi Huang would have continued enlisting slaves to build his crazy tomb; Hitler would have continued piling up Jews until making a mountain as tall as Mount Everest; My great-great-grandmother would have—well, I had no idea, but judging from her wackiness, surely nothing good.
And the question also applied to us: to become immortal? What for? To eat at McDonald's until cows went extinct? To buy clothes and electronics until our houses exploded? To fill the Earth with plastic bags, bottles, and metal junk until they flew to its orbit?
Should I have said:
But let's say they had achieved their goal
and ...
To eat at McDonald's until cows go extinct?
and ...
To buy clothes and electronics until our houses explode?
and finally:
To fill the Earth with plastic bags, bottles, and metal junk until they fly to its orbit?
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1 answer
had achieved their goal and become immortal
because you're talking about past efforts.
I think the second paragraph should be in subjunctive, which is what you put in your suggested corrections. The narrator is positing a hypothetical future, not a real or hypothetical past.
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