Literary notes about thicket (AI summary)
In literature, the word "thicket" is employed not merely as a description of dense natural growth but also as a symbol of concealment, complexity, and transition. Authors use it to create settings that are both physically and metaphorically challenging—a place where characters hide, seek, or even lose themselves. For instance, a character might retreat behind a thicket to observe mysterious shapes [1] or dash into one to evade danger [2], while in other works, a thicket serves as a liminal space marking the boundary between known and unknown realms [3, 4]. In some narratives, it even stands as a metaphor for the intricacies of human thought and social entanglements [5], demonstrating its versatile and evocative presence across literary genres.
- Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift - I, however, darted back into the woods, before the ferocious hound could get hold of me, and buried myself in a thicket, where he lost sight of me.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass - She emerged from “the thicket”; she had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Together!” cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the thicket to look for the snipe.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse