Lockdown and loneliness: Lessons from literature

“All great and precious are lonely,” so said popular writer John Steinbeck, who has written novels on economic problems of rural labour and even won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962.

While isolation in times of the coronavirus pandemic is a necessity now for the sake of health and life, for some, it is like traveling in uncharted waters. Some find it difficult, some get depressed while others turn it into a sabbatical to learn new things.

Being alone is not new for homo sapiens. It is eternal. Humans though capable of thinking rationally, have always wandered separately before he became a social animal.

Every human being, at some point of time, could have experienced or embraced loneliness or been alone. Because loneliness is related to existence.