Literary notes about desolate (AI summary)
"Desolate" functions as a potent descriptor in literature, evoking images of abandoned landscapes, forsaken cities, and inner emotional barrenness. Authors deploy the term to highlight physical emptiness—as when a snowy hill mirrors an entire world left barren [1]—as well as the profound isolation felt by individuals, whose lives seem stripped of hope and filled with despair [2]. Its usage extends into epic and sacred texts where it underscores themes of divine retribution and societal decay, leaving regions uninhabited and lives upended [3]. In this way, "desolate" captures both the stark physicality of ruins and the equally stark solitude of the human condition.
- "Let me hope," thought I, "or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole world as desolate as this snowy hill."
— from Twice-told tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.
— from Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 6 - He learned to make widows, and to lay waste their cities: and the land became desolate, and the fulness thereof by the noise of his roaring. 19:8.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
