Learn English – “I knew him for…” or “I had known him for…”

past-perfectsimple-pasttenses

I'm writing a short story, and I'm unsure about the right tense to use. The first two sentences are:

I knew Mr. Brown for exactly 15 minutes. He had met me at the
entrance and was now accompanying me to the meeting.

I'm not sure about the tense in the first sentence. Normally I'd write:

I had known Mr. Brown for …

However, then the first and the second sentence would use the same tense, which also looks weird. What is the right tense to use?

Best Answer

If I were reading a story that began

I knew Mr. Brown for exactly 15 minutes. He had met me at the entrance and was now accompanying me to the meeting.

I would expect the following things of the story:

  1. Mr. Brown would die 15 minutes after he had met First Person Narrator.
  2. FPN's second sentence would begin a narration of the circumstances of his death.

(1) comes from the use of past knew in the first sentence; one cannot use the present perfect construction with a dead subject or object, so using the simple past is a tipoff that they're dead.

And the time lapse is only 15 minutes, well within the narrative scope of the story, whence (2).

There's a (3), as well, but it's just a flag to watch for while reading -- Mr. Brown's death may be a red herring, and merely a way into a different story, rather than being the point of this story.

I don't know whether that helps, or not.