Oder "jeweils nach 16 Std wacher Zeit schickt sie uns in den Nachtschlaf von 8 Std" . Das ist offenbar gemeint.

So verstehe ich es auch.

Und ich verstehe nicht, warum manche Leoniden sich über die Anfragen von keeberelf so aufregen. Nicht alles kann man googlen, und selbst wenn: Bei anderen Anfragen macht man weit weniger kritische Bemerkungen.

OT @ ich verstehe nicht, warum - Na ja, Aufregenachfolger für azhong vielleicht. Der ist ja jetzt weg ;-)

Hilfsbereitschaft eher nachlässt ≠ aufregen

• There are the stars doing their old, old criss-cross journeys in the sky.
• Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. They're just chalk .. or fire. 
• Only this one is straining away, straining away all time to make something of itself. The strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

I agree with Gibson, he's talking about the Earth. Neither underlined sentence makes any sense if he's talking about the sun.

The progression of thought doesn't go directly from 'stars' to 'this one', but via 'up there', that is, space in general: stars - space - Earth.

[I hadn't yet seen #7.]

To return to the question (which is indeed a justified enquiry):

I'm sure Gibson's view in #1 is correct.

And yes, by 16 hours the speaker obviously means 16 hours of wakefulness.

It took me a while to realise what "straining away" means: I thought at first, after just seeing the subject line, that it meant that a planet was trying to pull itself away from [other planets or whatever]. But obviously it means working hard and continuously, referring to what Earth's inhabitants do.

(away

9. adverb [...]You can use away to emphasize a continuous or repeated action.

He would often be working away on his computer late into the night.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/...)

Not relating to the actual question: in the second line of the passage quoted, I assume that "setting up" is the pronunciation of "sitting up" in the relevant American dialect.

sit up

3. phrasal verb

If you sit up, you do not go to bed although it is very late.

We sat up drinking and talking.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/...

Re "setting up": It definitely means "sitting up." I'm not sure if Wilder's usage reflects a regional pronunciation or regional usage of "set" instead of "sit." As I see it, it could be either, but, as I cited in another post, it's a characteristic of Wilder's writing here.

I basically agree with Gibson and others who support that direction (although contrary to #7, both of the underlined sentences make sense to me in context).

Like Hecuba - UK it took me a bit to figure out hat "straining away" meant "working hard" instead of "struggling to get away from" (and I suspect that the latter is how keeblerelf was interpreting it, leading to confusion).

I would also add that "only this one..." was a bit confusing to me at first. I was understanding "only" to be a conjunction meaning "but" or "however" instead of a modifier meaning "solely."

I suspect that Wilder is using "stars" figuratively, in part, to mean "worlds" or "solar systems," which would include associated planets. (Of course there is no life on stars!) Thus, the leap from "up there" to the Earth isn't so extreme.

Even if, as he says, scholars aren't in agreement about it, the stage manager seems to have accepted the fact that there is no life outside of the Earth, so he says that it is only on the Earth that people work so hard ("strain away") that they need to rest every sixteen hours. (Re #2: In English, "every 16 hours" can be taken to mean "after 16 hours awake, we need to sleep for 8 hours.")

Also, I fully support Dragon's #5 in response to #3. I've indicated the same thing in other threads.

However, this question is something totally different than the multitude of questions that could have been answered simply by looking in a dictionary (or could have been phrased, showing a bit of self-initiative, "I found these definitions/translations in a dictionary [citation from dictionary]. Which is meant here?" ). I could imagine that this passage could be the subject of a discussion in a ninth- or tenth-grade high school English class in the US.

It may well be that somewhere on the Internet there are teaching resources for Our Town in which this passage is indeed addressed, but they could likely be difficult to find, even if keeblerelf were willing to do a bit of googling on their own. Thus, I'm more than happy to contribute to working out an answer to this question.

Danke hbberlin für diesen Part:

In English, "every 16 hours" can be taken to mean "after 16 hours awake, we need to sleep for 8 hours."

Wollte ich nämlich selbst schon nachfragen wie das every dort zu sehen ist. Perfekt.