How would you interpret this phrase? How would you interpret this phrase ‘It was what I had wanted to do’? Is it an emphatic structure in grammar? I know the typical emphatic structure is ‘it be…who/that…’ But I’m not sure about that phrase. Thanks. It’s from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. the context: That night at the mess I sat next to the priest and he was disappointed and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. He had written to his father that I was coming and they had made preparations. I myself felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.