Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[jays]

In the bold part of the following sentences, which of the two is correct?
[ The Black Cat, Adgar Allen Poe / a brute beast = a cat ]
(1) I awoke hourly and in reality the cat was on my bosom.
(2) I felt the cat in the dream, not in reality.
---- the following -----------
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast - whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed - a brute beast to work out for me - for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight - an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off - incumbent eternally upon my heart !

[redset]

1) is right - start in this case means to jerk forward in shock or surprise, suddenly waking from a dream (you might have done this yourself!). Incarnate means 'in flesh', so he's saying that the nightmare from his dreams exists in reality in this cat - the cat is his nightmare given flesh.