Literary notes about relief (AI summary)
The word relief in literature is richly multifaceted, often conveying a temporary reprieve from physical discomfort, emotional turmoil, or existential distress. Authors use it to mark moments when suffering diminishes—whether through small personal victories or broader societal change—as when a character feels the weight of anxiety lift with a simple gesture ([1], [2], [3]). In other narratives, relief illustrates the complex interplay between partial remedies and lingering pain, suggesting that while relief may provide a breath of respite, it rarely equates to a complete cure ([4]). The term also serves an aesthetic function, describing how light, shadow, and form are rendered to accentuate features in bold detail ([5], [6]), and can even extend to spiritual and existential renewal, imbuing relief with a deeper, almost transcendent significance ([7], [8]).
- When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense relief.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - At last, between five and six o'clock, to our great relief, the physician came.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - It was well received; I sighed in relief.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - Relief is not complete cure, and may proceed from different causes.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
— from Life in the Iron-Mills; Or, The Korl Woman by Rebecca Harding Davis - Some mouldings are flat, others in relief.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio - [18] which the goddess girded on him with her own hand: the oath of fidelity and devotion was the ‘relief’ of this celestial investiture.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 by James Tod - But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her.”
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
