Why different tenses? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Using verb tenses correctly

This is a quote from The Great Gatsby:

She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye!

Why do these four verbs have different tenses: smiled, walking, shook, looking?

Answer 1

First, I'll show you how three of the verbs are used. If we changed all of them into the same tense, past simple, this is what would happen:

She smiled slowly, shook hands with Tom, and looked him flush in the eye.

Do you notice the change? The actions would become a sequence if we changed them all in the same tense.

So:

She smiled, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye.

The act of "looking" happened more or less at the same time as "shaking hands."

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Now, to explain the verb "walking," this is what we call an +ing clause. It derives from the original, complete prepositional clause, "after she walked through her husband" and can also be rephrased as "having walked through her husband" to state the actual order of the actions.

But because "walk" is a short action followed by another short action "shake hands," we can simply use the v+ing instead of having p.p. Like this:

Walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, she shook hands with Tom.

Answer 2

The question is incorrect because it makes the wrong Presuppositions.

Why do the four verbs here (smiled, walking, shook, looking) have different tenses?

They don't have different tenses, you see. And there are five verbs in that sentence.

Smiled and shook are indeed both Past Tense, but walking and looking aren't any tense at all. Walking and looking are Participles (in both cases the Present Active Partiple, or -ing Form, of the verb), which, like Infinitives, are not inflected for tense, or anything else.

Each of these participles heads a Participial Clause, which is usually a derived ultimatedly from a field-stripped relative or, as in this case, adverbial clause.

• (after/while she) walked through her husband as if he were a ghost
• (as/while/at the same time she) looked him flush in the eye

They are participle clauses instead of tensed clauses because they lend a sense of immediacy and simultaneity to a description of a physical action, making the reader reconstruct the event more as a movie than a set of flat pictures. Note the alternation of the tensed and the untensed actions, like camera shots. For future analysis, this summary may be of some assistance.

As to the missed verb, it's were in the idiomatic tensed adverb clause as if he were a ghost.

Answer 3

The words "smiled" and "shook" are simple past tenses and indicate an action that is completed. The other two -ing verbs are used to show a continuing action. See What verb tense describes continuing action?