Unable to understand structure and meaning of this sentence

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1

<p>Hello guys
I am unable to understand structure and meaning of this sentence . I understood nothing of it. Can I get your help ? </p>

<p>People who don’t outgrow their colleges often
don’t grow in other ways; there remained in
Forster’s life and imagination a streak of the
undergraduate, clever but immature.</p>

2

<p>People who don’t grow up (mature, develop) in college usually don’t grow in other areas of their lives. They are stuck reliving their college days, so to speak. Basically, the sentence is saying that if someone has graduated college but parties all the time and doesn’t do their work, they haven’t outgrown college. And that was just one example of what the first sentence means–someone who hasn’t outgrown college (and still has that stereotypical “partying” mindset) might behave differently.</p>

<p>Forster hasn’t outgrown college. He hasn’t grown up. He hasn’t matured. He has an “undergraduate” streak.</p>

<p>Some people have winning streaks: In the same way, Forster is having an undergraduate streak. He still acts like a “clever but immature” undergraduate college student even though he has already graduated from college. He should have grown up already, but he still has his immature attitude from college.</p>

<p>Does that help?</p>

3

<p>Some grammatically correct sentences are difficult to parse since the brain’s initial interpretation is incorrect (these are called garden path sentences). For example when I first read it, I thought “There remained in Forster’s life …” and was confused when I saw “and.” Correct parsing is “There remained in [Forster’s life and imagination] a streak of…”</p>

<p>An example of a garden path sentence is, “The old man the boat.” (from Wikipedia).</p>

<p>Other than that, the sentence means exactly what it says.</p>