Literary notes about tangle (AI summary)
Writers use “tangle” to evoke both physical intricacy and the complexity of thought or circumstance. The word may describe a literal, chaotic heap—a dense network of undergrowth or twisted wires that challenges one’s ability to navigate it, as seen when authors depict jungles, gardens, or ruins ([1], [2], [3]). Simultaneously, “tangle” metaphorically captures the perplexity of emotions or ideas, often symbolizing a state of mental or situational intricacy that one strives to unravel ([4], [5], [6]). In various works, from detailed natural landscapes to explorations of human confusion, the term serves as a vivid reminder of life’s entangled nature and the difficulties inherent in disentangling the threads of experience ([7], [8]).
- One devastated area was exactly like another—a heap of rubble, a morass of shell-holes, and a tangle of wire.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes - After touching the saint's feet, I sauntered into the jungle, making my way through its tropical tangle until I reached Tarakeswar.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - He flung himself resolutely into the tangle of undergrowth.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - And how else can all this tangle be explained?
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - This is the tangle of thought and afterthought wherein we are called to solve the problem of training men for life.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois - “I have now in my hands,” my companion said, confidently, “all the threads which have formed such a tangle.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle - We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
