Theme Of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Language has been used in many writing’s to convey the authors point. In the memoirs, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) the author uses many rhetoric in the passage such as allegory, anecdote, and rhetorical question. The author uses rhetoric to write the passage so that she can convey the last significance of the moments of her pass.

Following World War I, widows were abundant. Duchamp’s piece illustrates the grief stricken emotional and deadened vision widows had after the war when their wounds were ripe and unable to be restrained. The widow is much like Duchamp’s window- impenetrable and unreadable. The viewer cannot see the vision of the widow because the widow herself cannot she her own vision. Much like the inability of the viewer to look through the glass, the widow cannot look to somewhere else, to a different place. The viewer is left with an intimate bond with the widow, experiencing her inability to create a vision but is also left at a distance from the widow because of the viewer's inability to read her emotions and thought processes. The widow is draped in a veil of mourning and sadness much like the window is covered by black

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends and the other begins”(Poe, par. 3). Edgar Allan Poe, as well as many other writers throughout history, have questioned the ideological standards of society. A noteworthy debate that has surfaced time and time again through varying time periods is the dispute of logical and rational intelligence versus the impassioned emotion of one’s inner-self. These two conflicting philosophies divided and defined the different characteristics of literature during the Enlightenment era and the Romantic era. In order to understand why various authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and John Locke wrote in their differing styles, it is important to understand the historical context that inspired these authors. Although these approaches in style were exceedingly different, remarkable works of literature emerged from both time periods. While the various writers of the Enlightenment era had a more historical motivation for writing, the writers during the Romantic era composed an overall more amusing anthology of literary works.

Imagery is what makes stories come to life. Often times, our favorite stories are the ones full of powerful language that perfectly describes a setting, character, or situation. Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” is no exception. This essay contains several important analogies that help the reader picture what’s happening. This imagery adds to the meaning of the work as a whole by converting the seemingly pleasant descriptions to realizations about the nature of death.

By connecting, considering and concluding the response gained from literary works, the reader can obtain a deeper, analytical understanding of these techniques and tools used by the authors of the various literature forms. For this assignment, I have chosen to compare and contrast two separate literary works from “Journey into Literature” (Clugston, 2010), with similar themes. . The poems I will discuss are “The

Ramsay must also leave behind the promise of a wife and stable family to return home. He realizes that he will not be happy if he marries Diana, so he continues on with his life and deals with the guilt he feels for leaving her. The medal and the romantic interest must be dealt with and forgotten by Ramsay, so that he can continue towards enlightenment. However, he is disgusted with his hometown's celebration, realizing it is not a stage in his journey that will bring him happiness. The town goes so far as to burn an effigy of the German emperor, prompting Ramsay to write that, "I watched them with a display that mounted towards horror" (Davies 102). The Great War serves as a part of Ramsay's journey that he would rather move past, as it is filled with guilt and sadness that must eventually be dealt with. When viewed as a stage in his journey, it seems to be an inciting incident bringing about his desire to find happiness. The war introduces Ramsay's first true romantic experience, which produces more trouble in his life.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: there can be many different perspectives seen in a poem. One individual could read a poem as depressing and another can perceive it as a new beginning. One’s views rests on individual perspectives. For example, Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is dark and controversial. In my essay I will argue that Poe was not in his right mind and he was driven mad with evidence throughout his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

On one level, sectioning the novella in terms of prose and poetry serves an organizational purpose. To this end, it is easy to identify where the day ends and the dreams begin. Yet, what’s perhaps more striking is how this organization posits prose and poetry in an opposition as you would day and night. With the exception of the male poet that enters the narrative, prose belongs in the day, poetry: night. What’s more: the prose and poetry sections differ in content as much as they do in structure. While the prose sections are characterized by material concerns (appointments, money, social status), the poetry sections explore a deeper meaning and passion that isn’t present amidst the prose. This is perhaps so much so that when Cecily does start to feel something “strange and inexplicable” (41), she does not recognize it in her waking life. In this way, Pavlova also posits what poetry and prose represent in opposition – the “incorporeal region” (52) and the stuffy, outer world Cecily is brought up in. The majority of the novella reinforces the divorce between these two spheres by taking on the general structure of prose in the waking life and poetry within Cecily’s dreams.

The relations between art and life is explored throughout Martin McDonagh’s play, The Pillowman and Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent. They explore these relations through discussing the stylistic features of their characters and how these characters are perceived in real life. Both authors explore how the preconceived ideas of what a character should be is dismantled and the line which distinguishes between art and life is becoming less clear. Another way in which these authors explore the link between art and life is through the act of storytelling. This suggests that life is a form of art. Both texts deal with the argument of whether it is life that influences art or art that influences life. Some literary critics such as Henry James

She pioneered the stream of consciousness, as well as displaying the character’s innermost thoughts (Cersonsky). She also challenged the literary concept of time. In her work, To the Lighthouse, Woolf relies on the course of everyday life more heavily than major events. In fact, part one covers only seven hours in the lives of the Ramsay family. It recounts the story of a family that lives across the bay from a large lighthouse. It concludes with the realization that her vision was attained.

Virginia Woolf, an early twentieth century English modernist, uses a combination of symbols,imagery, and diction to demonstrate to her audience the ultimate struggle between life and death and the inescapable inevitability of death.

On the other hand, John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” is another interesting poem set in London, which tells the story of a nightingale that undergoes pain and suffering caused by a loss of human life but remains alive. Like in “the Raven” the latter the poem demonstrates clearly that pleasure is temporary and that human beings are mortal (Fogle 81). In the literary piece, Keats envisages the shortcomings of the physical environment and considers his own life gone when the nightingale song sets in. As such, the poet contrasts between the eternal nightingale and temporal life of human beings in an immensely imaginative way that integrates the primary factors affecting life including weather and natural aesthetics such as flower. Weather rejuvenates the power of the nightingales as evidenced in their covering of the heath. Like “the Raven,” however, “Ode to a nightingale” shares the theme of human mortality, spirituality and kindness, and isolation among the bereaved.

To the Lighthouse most appropriately fits this latter definition, where Woolf’s own discourse suggests a similar understanding of the term (Zwerdling 180). In a diary entry of 1928, Woolf notes her reluctance to consider To the Lighthouse a novel, describing it instead as a final act of remembrance: “I used to think of him [father] and mother daily” she recalled, “but writing The Lighthouse laid them in my mind.” In another entry the same year, Woolf describes To the Lighthouse as a burial rite, a cathartic elegy in which she “expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion…and in expressing it explained it, and then laid it to rest.” Contemporary scholars of Woolf’s work have similarly affirmed the importance of the concept of elegy within To the Lighthouse, asserting as Eavan Boland does that the true text of To the Lighthouse is undoubtedly Mrs. Ramsay, a figurative representation of Julia Duckworth Stephen, Woolf’s mother (Boland 10). In a letter sent to Woolf after reading the novel, Vanessa Bell further reinforces Mrs. Ramsay’s connection to Julia, noting that Woolf had created in Mrs. Ramsay “a portrait of mother which is more like her to me than anything I could have ever conceived of as possible.” Through Woolf’s own comments as well as those familiar with her life, it therefore

So, as I mentioned earlier that Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” is characterized with stream of consciousness literary techniques that is in the presence of third-person pronouns and past tense, which correspond with the form of narrative report, and on the other hand, it is also characterized with symbolic methods such as multiple point of view, use of time montage, shift of characters

As we read, Woolf’s novel, to the Lighthouse we see different aspects of art being used and how it is being used. Lily Briscoe plays a huge role in art in the story. She is working on a painting throughout the book but she does not want anyone to see it (Woolf 17-18). She feels that it is not good enough. However, Mrs. Ramsay, William Bankes and Charles Tansely seem to have different opinions about the painting. During Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party, Lily realizes what she needs to do to fix her painting but does not until the end of the story. The painting itself grows and changes throughout the book, just as Lily grows and changes as a person as she lives her life (Woolf 102).