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Literary notes about tangled (AI summary)

The word "tangled" in literature is a versatile descriptor that conveys both physical disarray and metaphorical complexity. Authors often use it to illustrate chaotic, intertwined settings—whether in natural landscapes where undergrowth or branches form a literal labyrinth ([1], [2]), or in more abstract representations of emotion and circumstance, as when confusions in life or character dilemmas are depicted as messy knots to be untangled ([3], [4], [5]). In some narratives, its use extends to evoking the disorder of historical progression or the complexity of human deceit, as in the proverbial tangled web of lies ([6], [7]), while in other works it paints vivid imagery of unkempt appearances and the wildness of nature itself ([8], [9], [10]). This multifaceted usage enriches the text by inviting readers to unravel both tangible and intangible intricacies within the story.
  1. Passing through the battery, we clambered up the hill behind, through a tangled brake of ferns and creepers.
    — from A Diplomat in Japan by Ernest Mason Satow
  2. Our path was bordered by hopelessly tangled bushes, formed from snarls of shrubs all covered with little star–shaped, white–streaked flowers.
    — from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne
  3. Now it was all so tangled, so hopeless—much worse than it was before, because she had the semblance of aid in her hand which she could not use.
    — from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser
  4. “I was only thinking how tangled things are.
    — from Howards End by E. M. Forster
  5. As a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to labour at a tangled case, and successfully to unravel it.
    — from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
  6. "O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!"
    — from No Hero by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
  7. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!"
    — from The Girl Scout Pioneers; Or, Winning the First B. C. by Lilian Garis
  8. His golden locks were tangled, his clothes were all awry, and everything about him betokened sorrow and woe.
    — from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
  9. The garden-gate was gone, and the place a tangled wilderness.
    — from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
  10. All is silence now, and ashes, and tangled weeds.
    — from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

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