> Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fe

> Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare and white except for the leaves. "“I read that paragraph and I want to cry,” confesses a literary scholar in Hemingway." What? That paragraph was horrible. First of all, after reading it two times, I still have no idea what the point was, other than: leaves, dust, troops. Second, he says the same thing three times. "Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the trees." Ok. "The trunks of the trees too were dusty" No shit. There's dust raised in the air high enough to get to the leaves. It's probably gonna be on the trunk. "and the leaves fell early that year" Wait. Did they already fall? Or are they falling now? Or is this an omniscient narrator saying they will in the future? "and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising" Yes, you told us in the last sentence. "and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling" Oh, ok, so the leaves are falling now. "and the soldiers marching" Yes, you told us in the last sentence, and previously in the current sentence.