Literary notes about deplorable (AI summary)
The term "deplorable" is employed across literature to evoke a sense of deep moral disapproval, lamentable physical condition, or social decay. In some works, it characterizes personal tragedy and self-inflicted downfall, as when a character’s life is said to be ruined by "deplorable madness" [1], while in others it highlights the disintegration of society or political order, as seen in the commentary on national conditions [2, 3]. Moreover, it is used to underscore the gravity of adverse consequences—whether those be the result of warfare, ignorance, or economic hardship [4, 5, 6]—thus transforming the term into a marker of both aesthetic and ethical failure. Such varied applications make "deplorable" a potent descriptor in literary narratives that critique human conditions and institutional missteps [7, 8, 9].
- and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices?
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by the necessity of self-defense, its situation is still deplorable.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison - The phenomena which the intellectual world presents are not less deplorable.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville - I am not exaggerating if I say that under these conditions your work will inevitably lead to two deplorable consequences.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - his position was deplorable, and this business of June's nearly as bad.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. by John Galsworthy - The family’s condition was most deplorable.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis - “But I am sure I’ve heard,” he persisted, raising his voice for the first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - I am not answerable for a deplorable calamity, which it was quite impossible to foresee.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - "It may turn to infection—but no such deplorable complication had taken place when I left Blackwater Park.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
