Literature Analysis: To the Lighthouse

1.)  To the Lighthouse, begins with The Window.  James, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay's son is watching the lighthouse through the window; he wants to go tomorrow.  Mrs. Ramsay tells James they will, however, critical and rational Mr. Ramsay says they will not; it is going to rain as the clouds indicate.  This bluntness of Mr. Ramsay, James hates.  Mrs. Ramsay is knitting a stocking for the man in the lighthouse's son.  Days past and guests arrive at the Ramsays house: Charles Tansley, Lily Briscoe, Mr. Carmichael, Paul Rayley, Minta, and others. For the majority of The Window, Virginia Woolf speculates on love, the disingenuous and tenuous relationships of adults, and the impact of one's childhood.  Her narration is stream of conscience, jumping from each character's mind to another's in fluid train of thought.  The largest event of this section of the novel is the huge dinner Mrs. Ramsay hosts.  All of the guests are there and interacting.  Here, Woolf plays with her observations of human social tendencies and falsities.

If this were a movie, here, the screen would dim, time would fade on this table, and Time Passes, would begin.


In Time Passes, Virginia Woolf changes her narration, diction, and syntax completely.  This entirely alters the mood and tone of the novel.  The narration is taken on by a third party observer.  This observer speaks with a very gloomy diction, creating a dark, funeral atmosphere.  Time passed and Mrs. Ramsay died, Mr. Ramsay became extremely depressed and pitiful, Andrew, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay died in the War (WW1), Prue, another daughter of the Ramsay's, died in childbirth, and everyone has moved out of the house that now, on the shore, rots and decays.  Mrs. McNab, a new character, is doing what she can to take of the house, for someday the remaining Ramsay's will return.  The house is on the coast of Scotland and the sea weather eats away the house.  The Observer watches Mrs. McNab as she dusts and sweeps and waters the dying plants.  The Observer, unknown to the reader, speaks of the time passed, the events that have taken place, in a dark monotone.  Mrs. Bast comes and aids Mrs. McNab in cleaning the house.  Days later, Lily Briscoe returns with Mr. Carmichael.  The novel returns to the present.

The Lighthouse, is the third and final part of the novel.  As if Time Passes hit the fast forward button, The Lighthouse is now ten years forward than The Window.  James and Cam, children of the Ramsay's are now late teenagers and Mr. Ramsay is very old.  Lily Briscoe and Mr. Carmichael remain at the house to read and paint while Mr. Ramsay takes James and Cam to the lighthouse.  The narration and style and tone/mood is all back to how it was in The Window.  The Novel ends with Mr. Ramsay's, Jame's, and Cam's arrival at the Lighthouse.  "It is finished."

2.)  The novel has many themes:  "Love has a thousand shapes," the frailty of adult relationships, the lasting effects of childhood events and impressions, keeping promises, loneliness ("in the end, you're alone,") and the transition of Time and the subjectivity of Reality.

3.)  Woolf's tone, for me, is hard to describe.  In the second movement it is obvious for she makes it really clear turn in tone that fits perfectly with the theme of the movement.  However, in the first and final movements, Woolf's tone, is almost sympathetic to the thoughts of the characters.  It is also imaginative as it gives a vision.  It, I think, can be understood as thoughtful.

4.)  Simile:  "It could not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of those people, and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling."  "He was like a lion seeking whom he could devour."  "Her sympathy seemed to be cast back on her, like  bramble sprung across her face."

The similes, for me, helped me understand how authors of Modernism thought in a way.  They also helped establish the imaginative, thoughtful tone of the first and third movements of the novel.

Personification:  "But at that moment the sail swung slowly round, filled slowly out, the boat seemed to shake herself, and then to move half conscious in her sleep, and then she woke and shot through the waves."

Simply added more imagery to the novel which many writers have claimed is an image/vision that contemplates life, reality, time. (very modern indeed.)

Symbolism:  In the novel, the window , the table, and the lighthouse stand out as obvious symbols but their meaning is ambiguous.  So, I found most of the symbols difficult to understand.  I couldn't find what Woolf was saying through them, though one can see that they are used extensively as media to communicate the themes.  I will have to, most likely, reread this novel in order to understand all of it.  However, without knowing fully, the meaning, it still moved me and really speaks to the spirit of humanity and life.

Narration:  "He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stoke lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds-that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things."

The stream of conscience narration is perfect for the novel.  Another theme; subjectivity of the human experience, reality, and time, all modernist ideas, is greatly conveyed through this style of narration.  I felt this narration greatly added to my understanding of, not only the novel, but of the philosophy of Modernism.

Syntax/ Diction:  "Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement."

This huge quote is all one fluid sentence.  Much of the narration is done as such; like fluid streams of thought; smooth and silk-like over one thought and fluidly transitioning onto the next thought or even onto the thoughts of another character.  It is this syntax that greatly develops the tone of Woolf's novel, in combination with the imagery.

"But slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and cracked the tea-cups."

"Listening (had there been anyone to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself."

These two quotes, both from the second movement of the novel, Time Passes, have a much different tone than the first quote, not taken from the second movement.  This tone is very gloomy and almost unpleasant in its sharp contrast to the tone one is acquainted with from the novel up until this point.  While the syntax is still long and drawn out, it creates a more drone, monotonous effect than the syntax in the first quote.  However, what makes this narration's tone so different is mainly the diction, which i did not point out in the first quote.  The diction in these two quotes really establishes a tone that is almost dark, or perhaps more correctly, not colored in anyway.  This tone was created to give a strong feeling or emotional quality (I had an emotional reaction to the tone) to the emptiness of time passing.  The tone also belittles the subjects of the sentences showing how, in the light of time, everything is insignificant, all is hardly seen, all is silence.

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse...