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Literary notes about Intolerable (AI summary)

The word "intolerable" is deployed in literature to amplify the sense of an overwhelming, often unbearable state—whether it is physical discomfort, emotional distress, or oppressive circumstances. Authors use it to characterize excruciating pain or a suffocating atmosphere, as when the heat or physical suffering becomes unbearable ([1], [2], [3]). At the same time, it conveys the anguish of personal or social torment, highlighting moments when relationships, social structures, or internal conflicts push characters toward the brink of endurance ([4], [5], [6]). In this way, "intolerable" functions as a powerful device to evoke heightened drama and to illustrate the pressing nature of both external hardships and inner turmoil ([7], [8], [9]).
  1. The heat became all at once intolerable.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
  2. Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors.
    — from The call of the wild by Jack London
  3. I say to my horror; for I was consumed with intolerable thirst.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
  4. These systems are a refuge from an intolerable situation: they are experiments in redemption.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
  5. Their separation was becoming intolerable.
    — from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  6. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?
    — from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
  7. A strange and wild restlessness came over me—the more intolerable, because I was forced to conceal it.
    — from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  8. Heavens, this is intolerable; such a world is no world for a philosopher to have to do with.
    — from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
  9. It was a subject intolerable to discuss, and every subconscious instinct plotted to defeat its further exploration.
    — from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

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