Literary notes about Incoherent (AI summary)
Writers employ "incoherent" to capture a range of disordered, fragmented, or irrational states—whether describing a character’s speech, internal thoughts, or even entire narrative modes. It often appears in contexts where the mind is overloaded or emotions run riot, as when a character emits frantic, disjointed exclamations during moments of distress [1] or becomes lost in disconnected, swirling thoughts amid inner turmoil [2]. Authors also apply the term to characterize language that defies logical structure, painting a picture of communication that is as bewildering as it is visceral, whether in the context of absurd, ill-fated reasoning [3] or in discussions contrasting coherent ideas with those that must logically contradict each other [4]. In doing so, literature leverages "incoherent" as a versatile tool to illustrate the breakdown of clarity in both personal expression and conceptual thought.
- and with sundry incoherent exclamations of the like nature, the unhappy gentleman spun round and round the apartment, in a transport of frenzy.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon him.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - He hardly contested the evidence against him, and if he tried to turn a fact to his advantage, it was in an absurd and incoherent way.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Two propositions are coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least must be false.
— from The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
