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Sadly, I haven't made reading part of life until very recently and I've added a lot of classic Sci-fi books to my shelves. However, I'm looking for a certain “feel�� I was hoping some of you Sci-Fi vets could help me find. I'm looking for a book (if it exists) where the protagonist learns, from interstellar travel, the vast insignificance of everything he's known of his world and the universe. The sheer vastness, sorrow, or loneliness he experiences from space travel either drives him mad or brings him to some point of philosophical transcendence that his mission becomes meaningless and is abandoned at the expense of his people.

Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan had a little bit of this feel as he's so nonchalant over the fact his wife cheats on him, for example. Basically just looking for space travel greatly changing a person.

Suggestions?

Poul Anderson & Larry Niven both wrote some books that will fit the bill.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke has that effect depending on whether you view that transcendence as a positive or negative thing. But it's not just the protagonist that has to deal with the vastness of the universe but the entire earth population. Hmm...and its not so much humans going out to space as space coming to them. I'm guessing 2001: A Space Odyssey might have some of that too based on the movie? But I've not read the book.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King has a "vastness of the universe" moment, but as its part of a series one doesn't know how it affects the protagonist yet...and he doesn't travel to space either.

I feel like I got some of that sense from Cherryh's The Faded Sun Trilogy, though the catalysts were more a clash of cultures & different perspectives on time & memory than the physicality of space itself

Awesome, thanks everyone. I'll check those out.

this one not really a travel since the protagonist stayed at one place (outpost near Pluto) but his loneliness and isolation is very well told The Second Kind of Loneliness

Straight up, Spin

Its a series and it has everything your looking for.