Literary notes about fog (AI summary)
Writers employ the word “fog” as both a literal atmospheric condition and a metaphor for uncertainty, disorientation, and hidden truths. It can evoke a sense of oppressive gloom that enshrouds characters—as when a priest struggles to bless himself in its thickness [1]—or mirror the inner turmoil of a troubled mind [2]. At times, fog is animated with vivid, even eccentric qualities, described with melancholic hues that render it almost alive [3]. In other narratives it functions as an obstacle on a journey, both physical and metaphorical, obscuring the landscape and the path ahead [4][5]. Thus, across contrasting genres and eras, fog becomes a powerful literary device that deepens mood and amplifies the thematic resonance of mystery and ambiguity.
- There was then before us a terrible dark gulf over which hung such a thick fog that a priest couldn’t see to bless himself in it.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget - My mind was wandering, still surrounded by a heavy fog.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - “It was a frantic fog,” said Bianchon, “a fog unparalleled, doleful, melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical—a Goriot of a fog!”
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac - Towards morning the wind went down, and during the whole forenoon we lay tossing about in a dead calm, and in the midst of a thick fog.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana - I sought, amid the awful stillness, to penetrate through the distant fog, to tear down the veil which concealed the mysterious distance.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
