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In the film The Exorcist, father Demien Karras challenges the daemon Pazuzu to get a bigger dare. That dare would consist in abandon the body of the girl Regan and penetrate Demien's body. My interest is to know what would be the correct sentence to describe this situation. The options I imagined are:

  1. The priest challenges the demon to enter in his proper body.
  2. The priest challenges the demon to enter in himself.
  3. The priest challenges the demon to enter him.
  4. The priest challenges the demon to enter in his self body.

In other words, he asks the demon to abandon the girl's body and enter in himself. He wanted to be in the place of the girl, he proposed a change.

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  • #3 is the only syntatically correct sentence. I started editing the question but there were many errors especially in the example sentences so I abandoned further changes. You might want to explore ell.stackexchange.com
    – mplungjan
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 12:22

1 Answer 1

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Usually it is best to avoid a passive construction, but I cannot seem to craft a sentence in the active voice that describes the action at hand without having an ambiguous antecedent for whatever pronoun refers to the priest. Consider switching to the passive: "The demon is challenged by Fr. Karras to enter the priest's own body."

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  • #3 is unambiguous. If the him referred to the demon it would be himself.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 16:55
  • #3 is unambiguous yes, but a passive construction makes for greater clarity
    – Mario Elocio
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 17:33

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