Literary notes about Condemned (AI summary)
Across literature, the term "condemned" frequently carries a dual force: it is employed both as a legal verdict and as a marker of moral judgment. In many writings, the term denotes an official sentence rendering someone for death or perpetual suffering, as seen in historical and fictional portrayals of capital punishment or exile [1], [2], [3], [4]. At the same time, authors use it as a metaphor for societal scorn or personal despair, where even abstract misdeeds or weaknesses lead to a figurative state of being beyond rescue [5], [6], [7]. Moreover, in narratives with political or religious themes, "condemned" often underscores the role of authoritative judgment and the inescapable fate of those who defy prevailing values [8], [9], [10]. These varied applications reveal how the term enriches literary discourse by embodying both the finality of legal sanctions and the broader, enduring weight of social and ethical disapproval.
- A man condemned to death is listening to his confessor in the tumbrel.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - His defence, however, avails him nothing, and he is condemned by the judges to die by drinking the poisonous hemlock.
— from Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates by Plato - Jean Valjean was condemned to five years in the galleys.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - True, that is a trait which some might have condemned in her, but I say, 'What rubbish!'
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - I think he was a little hard and unsparing, sometimes, though I don't know enough to judge the men and measures he condemned.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott - She added that I was more to be pitied than condemned, and that she did not love me less.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - He was condemned, July 12, 1555, and suffered Aug. 8, at Uxbridge.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - Such a step would not be condemned either by the Gods who received our oaths, or by the men who witnessed them.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides - Every impulse, however, had initially the same authority as this censorious one, by which the others are now judged and condemned.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
