Literary notes about within (AI summary)
The word "within" in literature is remarkably versatile, functioning to express spatial boundaries, inner emotional states, temporal limits, and conceptual confines. In some instances, it creates a sense of physical space or proximity, as seen when a character lives "within view of Windsor Castle" [1] or when a boat approaches "within six yards of the animal" [2]. At other times, it delves into inner experience, as illustrated by the internal turmoil in "My blood boiled within me" [3] or the secret thoughts clashing within a character's mind [4, 5]. Authors also employ "within" to mark boundaries of time or jurisdiction, whether it is completing a task "within twenty-four hours" [6] or delineating the limits of a defined territory or memory [7, 8]. Thus, "within" serves as a powerful literary device that anchors characters and events both in the physical world and in the abstract realms of thought and emotion.
- I took possession of my sister's cottage, and blessed myself that I lived within view of Windsor Castle.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The boat approached within six yards of the animal.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne - My blood boiled within me when I heard his address tonight, and thought that he had left behind him three millions of such men.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass - [5] predicts; then at once there rise up within me the Accuser and the Counsel for the defence, ready to confront each other.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer - But afterwards he said within himself:
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - All dressmaking establishments give precedence to mourning orders and will fill a commission within twenty-four hours.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post - So the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the limits of what their Church defined as orthodox.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Within recent days it has become peopled wholly with Hebrews, the overflow from Jewtown adjoining, pedlars and tailors, all of them.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis
