Literary notes about insensible (AI summary)
The word "insensible" in literature takes on multiple shades of meaning, ranging from a literal loss of physical sensation to a figurative depiction of indifference or unnoticed change. In many narratives, it describes a state of unconsciousness or numbed response resulting from overwhelming forces—physical violence renders a character insensible to pain or consciousness [1, 2, 3]—while in other contexts it conveys an emotional detachment, as when a character remains untouched by romance or kindness [4, 5]. Authors also exploit the term to evoke subtle, gradual transitions, suggesting changes that are barely perceptible to the human senses [6, 7] or even to nature itself [8]. This versatility enriches character portrayals and thematic layers, highlighting both the fragility and resilience of human response to intense circumstances [9, 10].
- Overpowered at last, he was gagged and bound with ropes, and beaten, until he became insensible.
— from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - I was greatly frightened; I opened the curtain, took the lantern, and found him almost insensible, and the mouth drawn on one side.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - They drew him to my very feet—insensible—dead.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - She is indifferent to my romance, and insensible to my beauty.
— from Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw - 45 The character of the Egyptian nation, insensible to kindness, but extremely susceptible of fear, could alone justify this excessive rigor.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - But the chance will be infinitely small of any record having been preserved of such slow, varying, and insensible changes.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - The blaze of the sunlight was replaced by insensible degrees by cool shadow.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its way from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her dead boy.
— from Mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne - “What harm does it do? Bianchon said that the old man was quite insensible.”
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
