Literary notes about muddle (AI summary)
The word “muddle” in literature is employed as a flexible term that conveys both tangible disorder and internal confusion. Authors use it to illustrate chaotic situations or mental perplexity—for instance, a regiment's unruly movement is likened to a cart stuck in “mud and muddle” [1], while characters lament being mentally disoriented, as when one confesses, “I'm all in a muddle” [2, 3]. The term also captures the messy state of affairs in social, political, and even academic contexts, where systems or debates devolve into an unintelligible confusion [4, 5]. Moreover, “muddle” often carries a playful yet critical tone, serving as a subtle comment on the inherent disorderliness of human endeavors and the struggle to impose clarity on life’s complexities [6, 7, 8].
- The regiment, involved like a cart involved in mud and muddle, started unevenly with many jolts and jerks.
— from The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane - I’m all in a muddle; can’t recollect anything of it, hardly.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by Mark Twain - Otherwise, if left to myself, my head gets all in a muddle.'
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao - It was a strange mix-up, and the more committees examined it the worse appeared the muddle.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - For as the analysis proceeds we gradually replace the whole of the original mere muddle by clear and definite things and qualities.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - It seems to me”—dreamily; she was not alarmed—“that you are in a muddle.”
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - Incoherence itself, may it not be the very sort of coherence I require? Muddle!
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - “But do you know” (Pyotr Stepanovitch was startled again) “we must talk things over thoroughly again so as not to get in a muddle.
— from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
