Literary notes about Guilt (AI summary)
Writers employ the term “guilt” to convey a spectrum of moral, legal, and psychological tensions. It functions both as an internal state that torments individuals with self-reproach and as a marker used by society or fate to impose judgment on transgressions. At times guilt emerges as an almost palpable weight that disrupts a character’s inner peace and drives their actions [1, 2], while in other instances it symbolizes external condemnation that cannot be easily shed, whether by legal adjudication or moral censure [3, 4]. In some narratives, guilt is interwoven with shame and the burdens of inherited sin, linking personal failings to broader societal or cosmic orders [5, 6]. Thus, across diverse texts, guilt remains a versatile and enduring device, deepening character studies and underscoring the timeless conflict between human fallibility and the quest for redemption [7, 8].
- balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt, which would pursue me until death.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
— from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare - He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after his long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens - Distracted with the consciousness of his guilt and of his danger, he communicated the intelligence to the senate.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Thus, under the guilt of your vows, and of the passion which preceded them, I must be tormented all the days of my life.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard and Héloïse - By embracing the faith of the gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Yet he went to see Mitya on the first day of his arrival, and that interview, far from shaking Ivan's belief in his guilt, positively strengthened it.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 'It will avail you nothing,' said he to his wife, 'to deny the fact; I have proof of your guilt.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe
