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Literary notes about load (AI summary)

The word “load” in literature takes on a multifaceted significance, functioning both as a literal measure of weight and as a metaphor for emotional and psychological burdens. It is employed to evoke the heaviness of physical objects—the tangible burdens of hay, wood, or cargo, as seen when a man struggles under a “heavy load[1] or when monumental items are described in epic journeys [2]—while also symbolizing intangible weights like sorrow, duty, and moral responsibility, such as the relief of shedding one’s cares [3, 4] or the inevitable burden of life’s trials [5, 6]. Moreover, the term is adapted in technical and humorous contexts, ranging from the loading of a firearm [7, 8] to the quotidian managing of tasks and goods [9, 10].
  1. Again I started the heavy load, and struggled on a few yards; again the whip came down, and again I struggled forward.
    — from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
  2. A camel-load is generally about three hundred-weights.
    — from The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I.
  3. I sinned, I did lighten his load for him.”
    — from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  4. I am told that he seemed almost relieved; “it was a load off his heart,” he is reported to have said.
    — from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  5. Alas, what antenatal crime, What trespass of forgotten time Weighs on my soul, and bids me bow Beneath this load of misery now?” Canto XXVI.
    — from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki
  6. I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring, by bodily exercise, to ease the load that weighed upon my mind.
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  7. I do not know, but happen what will, I load my gun and await coming events.
    — from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova
  8. Jeanty Sarre showed him how to load a gun.
    — from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo
  9. I have only to load it, and the mare must draw it.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
  10. And this 10 tons cost you 50 cents a ton to load, draw out, and spread.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson

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