Literary notes about pariah (AI summary)
The term "pariah" is wielded in literature to evoke images of profound exclusion and marginality, often blurring the line between literal outcasts and symbolic ones. In some texts it denotes a person consigned to the lowest strata of society because of race, class, or behavior—for example, a character branded an outcast from birth or by societal convention [1][2]—thereby emphasizing the cruelty of rigid social hierarchies. In other instances, the word is applied more literally, as with stray animals that serve as metaphors for social abandonment and decay [3][4]. Additionally, as writers such as those in [5] and [6] illustrate, embracing the pariah identity sometimes becomes a complex, self-aware act that critiques social norms and exposes the arbitrary boundaries between acceptance and ostracism.
- Before she had seen daylight, the uncharity of mankind had proclaimed her a half-caste and a pariah.
— from The Vanishing Point by Coningsby Dawson - But the worst was, that the Pariahs themselves regarded me with suspicion; they thought it unnatural in a Brahmin to care for a Pariah!
— from The Pilgrims of the Rhine by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron - In South Canara, none but the lowest Pariah will rub a horse down.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston - The pariah dog performs his scavenging duties conscientiously, but he possesses few other merits to recommend him to one's esteem.
— from An English Girl's First Impressions of Burmah by Beth Ellis - As a result of these absurd and terrible rumors, Hunt finds himself a pariah—many of his oldest acquaintances no longer recognize him when they meet.
— from The Book of Susan: A Novel by Lee Wilson Dodd - I was a pariah, the suspect of both sides, the ill-treated hero of a romantic novel.
— from The Jervaise Comedy by J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
