The terror of being just out of reach

Post date: 2021-01-26 03:51:08

I'm looking for good literary descriptions of the terror / hopelessness one can feel when something bad is happening and it's ineviteable. Do you know of an author who's described this well, or is there a specific word in English or other languages which fit the bill?

In real life the feeling is never this clear cut for me, but I react to it strongly in fiction & art; Some examples from TV that have stuck with me:

I saw a dramatisation of a mountain climbing expedition which ran out of rope on the way down. The would-be rescuers took a cable car up but could only come within shouting distance of the survivors – there was nothing they could do to reach them in time and the last climber of the expedition died only a few meters away from safety.

In season 2 of the Expanse there's scene where a group of refugees are dropped into space to die, not transferred to another ship as they thought. A protagonist sees this through a window but is unable to help.

In Event Horizon there's a scene where Smith Sean Pertwee] discovers a bomb on a ship, but instead of having the usual action scene where the actor tries to defuse it and dies a heroic frantic death, he just lowers his head in acceptance that there's nothing he can do to change the outcome.

The feeling I'm looking to describe is not one of profound acceptance of an injust and uncaring universe, but the realisation that you haven't accepted it but are unable to change a thing even though you know what is required – it's a combination of despair, grief-in-advance and paralyzing rage.

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