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Tintin in Tibet: The taxi and the nail in the road?

checkerbot
Member
#1 · Posted: 9 Mar 2008 12:37
What was the nail in the road doing, when the taxi was in motion? It's in the last frame of page 8. It can't be a coincidence, you know, because Hergé wrote the books in such detailed fashion.

Can anyone really find out the answer...?
col gee
Member
#2 · Posted: 19 Mar 2008 20:55
checkerbot:
What was the nail in the road doing, when the taxi was in motion?

Checkerbot, it was just a red herring.
The driver says "nothing will stop me now" as you see the car approach the nail.
The reader is convinced that the car will drive over it and burst the tyre - but it misses it!
Ironically, the car then has to stop twice when the Captain gets something in his eye and then he loses his cap.
Hergé is just keeping the reader on edge and never quite sure what is going to happen next.
Dupondt
Member
#3 · Posted: 19 Mar 2008 22:43
Haha I was just reading that last night, in French and was just wondering what it was in English.
In the original, the French version that is, the driver says "Il faudrait vraiment que nous crevions une pneu", which means "We'll really have to burst a tyre!".
A fairly common phrase, much like "putting the pedal to the metal".

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