Don Apolinar Moscote ventured to remind him that an unburied drowned man was a danger to public health. “None of that, because he’s alive,” was the answer of Jose Arcadio Buendia, who finished the seventy-two hours with the mercurial incense as the body was already beginning to
burst with a livid fluorescence, the soft whistles of which impregnated the house with a pestilential vapor. Only then did he permit them to bury him, not in any ordinary way, but with the honors reserved for Macondo’s greatest benefactor.
(One Hundred Years of
Solitude, tr. by Gregory Rabassa)I guess that without of the highlighted part looks all right. Why is of used?
Answer
Of is used to tell you what was the source of soft whistles, which in this case is the fluorescence which was being emitted from a dead man’s body.
If of is omitted, the last sentence starting from “the soft whistles” will look incomplete and look more like a prelude for a coming-up sentence.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Listenever , Answer Author : Mohit
