Literary notes about Searching (AI summary)
The word “searching” in literature serves as both a literal and metaphorical device, conveying actions of deliberate inquiry as well as deeper, introspective quests. It often describes physical acts of looking for something lost or hidden, whether it is a tool, a key, or sustenance ([1], [2], [3]), yet it simultaneously captures the intensity of a gaze or the probing of one’s inner self ([4], [5], [6], [7], [8]). Moreover, authors employ “searching” to express a broader quest for truth, spiritual fulfillment, or intellectual clarity, reflecting a state of restless striving in both personal and societal contexts ([9], [10], [11], [12], [13]). This dual usage enriches the narrative texture, imbuing both external actions and inner emotions with layers of meaning.
- After searching through it, he took out a selection of tools which he produced to lay beside him in orderly fashion.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - She tries the door, and finding it locked, goes about the room searching for the key.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - “Food, however, became scarce; and I often spent the whole day searching in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Their eyes met—a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.
— from Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. Braddon - He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens - She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - He looked at me curiously, with that same searching glance which I hate and fear so in doctors.
— from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers - She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - Reduced to its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it throws the action further forward that twenty “incidents” might have done.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James - All this must mean a time of intense ethical ferment, of religious heart-searching and intellectual unrest.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois - Perhaps that you're searching far too much?
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - No, there was no teaching a truly searching person, someone who truly wanted to find, could accept.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - It marks an inquiring, hunting, searching attitude, instead of one of mastery and possession.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey
