Past tense or past perfect tense?

[yamgo]

In the following paragraph, I'm unsure if "be ripped out of" should be in the past tense or past perfect tense. To my understanding, the past perfect tense is used to describe something that had happened before another point in the past, which is the case here, but past tense sounds better to me:

She had witnessed how a person dear to her had been ripped out of her life.

or

She had witnessed how a person dear to her was ripped out of her life.

Thanks for all your help and sorry for all the questions in this forum.

 

[HareBrain]

The first, past perfect, one (which does sound better to my taste, rather than simple past). I have come across two-verb sentences where the first is past-perfect and it's not clear which to use for the second, but to my mind this isn't one of them.

 

[yamgo]

All right, thank you!

 

[CTRandall]

I suspect the first is technically correct--and I agree with Harebrain that it sounds better to me--but I doubt either way will cause much consternation to any but the most tedious of pedants (apologies to those who post after me). You might want to consider the voice of your narrator, whether it should sound technically correct or if it should sound more colloquial.

 

[chrispenycate]

As a pedant I go for the pluperfect (yes, I am that old) when the narrative is already in the past, and the situation described is even further back, ie. your first example. On the other hand I find much modern writing to be sloppy, and am the sort of person who will use subjunctives in everyday speech and wince at split infinitives - perchance I am not the best judge in our present world.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

They're both fine in different ways. The first is grammatically correct. But what is grammatically correct in our speech or in a letter is not necessarily so in fiction.

In novels, often you have flashbacks that begin in past perfect, then quickly switch to the past tense. That's because writing an entire paragraph or two in the past perfect gets awkward-sounding really fast. On one hand, you can say that this tense switch is there simply for the sake of convenience. On the other hand, this being fiction, you can think of it this way: the past perfect functions as a time switch, after which we are seeing things from the point of view of the past/flashback character, not from that of the main narrative. (It's the same as, when you have a flashback in a film, the wavy dissolve indicates a switch to the past, but then, when you're watching the flashback itself, there aren't necessarily any indications that it is in the past of the movie's narrative. It's only the transitions that indicate "past.") So here, "had witnessed" indicates the switch to flashback, then you are seeing it from the point of view of the character in the flashback.

The second version actually sounds better to me, BTW.

 

[ginny]

Oddly my first question would be:
She had witnessed how a person dear to her had been ripped out of her life.
Is it that she witnessed the method by which a person dear to her had been ripped out of her life.
I still think for full effect.
She had witnessed a person dear to her ripped out of her life.

Unless you really mean the method by which, the whole extra' how..had' been risks slowing things down and becoming passive.

That's just my editorial opinion.