In Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, childhood is portrayed as a time of tribulation and terror, rather than the stereotype that claims that childhood is a blissful period of innocence and wonder. Because of her more realistic point of view, Woolf molds her characters into complex adults that are products of their upbringings. This contributes to the piece as a whole because it has a sense of reality that allows readers to relate with the characters on a personal level. Throughout the novel, Woolf uses two main characters to embody her representation of childhood. Even though Charles Tansley is an adult, the reader can see the full effects his childhood had on his adult life. Moreover, the reader sees the troubling events of childhood and their effects on adulthood in James Ramsay’s life.
Within the first couple chapters the reader is able to learn valuable information about Charles Tansley that explains his character as an adult. While he and Mrs. Ramsay venture into town he discloses that he grew up in an impoverished family. He goes on to explain that he was never able t...
In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes, “for in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be”. Does one’s childhood truly have an effect on the person one someday becomes? In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, this question is tackled through the recounting of Jeannette and Amir’s childhoods from the perspectives of their older, more developed selves. In the novels, an emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the relationships Jeannette and Amir have with their fathers while growing up, and the effects that these relations have on the people they each become. The environment to which they are both exposed as children is also described, and proves to have an influence on the characteristics of Jeannette and Amir’s adult personalities. Finally, through the journeys of other people in Jeannette and Amir’s lives, it is demonstrated that the sustainment of traumatic experiences as a child also has a large influence on the development of one’s character while become an adult. Therefore, through the analysis of the effects of these factors on various characters’ development, it is proven that the experiences and realities that one endures as a child ultimately shape one’s identity in the future.
1966 was a turning point in American history. It was the height of the Space Race as well as the Vietnam War. In the entertainment industry, The Beatles had released the album Revolver, the show Star Trek premiered on television, and the play Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? was adapted to film. This film was controversial for several reasons, including its depiction of violence and drinking, as well as its theme of sexuality. For a movie to take on such bold scenes and topics requires other bold cinematic choices as well. These choices included casting glamorous actors and actresses in not so glamorous roles, filming in black and white as opposed to color, and using unique cinematic film shots in various scenes. The choices that the filmmakers
In his novel Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger portrays childhood and adolescence as times graced by innocence when his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is faced with the reality of becoming an adult. Holden’s desperation to maintain his innocence and the manner in which he critiques those he deems to have lost theirs, emphasizes his immaturity and ignorance while highlighting the importance the author places on childhood.
...e heartstrings of readers in dissimilar ways, together, they demonstrate that children, even without familial structure, can find a way of reaching self-understanding and happiness. For Montgomery and Burnett, the usage of orphaned characters may have been taken from a range of possibilities. Through their characters, they proved that self-reliance and independence are qualities that any child, despite their upbringing, is capable of demonstrating. Additionally, the authors had roles in evoking the sympathy that truly defines a tragic character, and the era during which the tragedies occurred. Anne, Mary and the orphaned protagonists in the remainder of the literary world continue to prove that children, even those entirely independent from guidance, are every bit as capable of taking on the world as adults, and it is for this trait that they are adored.
Why would I start with Julia Duckworth Stephen to get to Virginia Woolf? One answer is Virginia’s often quoted statement that "we think back through our mothers if we are women" (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). Feminism is rooted not just in a response to patriarchy but also in the history of females and their treatment of each other. Part of feminism is a reevaluation of the value of motherhood.
Much success has come from the novel due to its highly relatable nature and has made others’ lives easier to make sense of. The novel’s importance is that it is there to describe the rough period where one changes from a child to an adult, and accomplishes this through the blunt nature of Holden Caulfield, his lack of understanding of adults, and his dissatisfaction of life in general.
...ldhood experiences and memories becomes the central theme. Jim, Antonia, Anton Cuzak, Mr. Shimerda, and the Cuzak children are all representative of one's past and present. The characters' past and present are explored in-depth within the context of the Nebraskan prairie. This environment actively symbolizes the connections that the characters develop between themselves and their environment and with each other. Cather's tone with respect to the central theme is ultimately revealed in "Book V" and anchored in Jim's realization that reconnection to the setting and relationships of his youth is central to an overall sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in adulthood. Upon completion of "Book V", Cather has done away with the conventional wisdom that "one can never go home again" and has shown the reader that at times , one must go home again in order to be fulfilled.
Virginia's relationships throughout her life contributed, not only to her literature, but the quality of her life as well. Perhaps the greatest influence in Virginia's life is her mother, Julia Stephen. "Julia Stephen was the most arresting figure which her daughter [Virginia Woolf] tried to resurrect and preserve" (Gordon 4). Woolf, a manic-depressive, found herself constantly searching for approval. "Virginia needed her mother's approval in order to 'measure her own stature" (Bond 38). Battling with a sense of worthlessness, Virginia's mother helped her temporarily rid herself of self-criticism and doubt. This however was short-lived. When Mrs. Stephen rejected Virginia, she felt her mother's disapproval directly related to the quality of her writing. "Virginia Woolf could not bear to reread anything she had written… Mrs. Stephen's rejection of Virginia may have been the paradigm of her failure to meet her own standards" (Bond 39). With the death of her mother Woolf used her novel, To the Lighthouse to "reconstruct and preserve" the memories that still remained. According to Woolf, "the character of Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse was modeled entirely upon that of her mother" (Bond 27). This helped Virginia in her closure when dealing with the loss and obsession with her mother. Although Virginia clung to the relationship with her mother, she favored her father, Leslie Stephen. Virginia resembled her father uncannily in character traits, in her writing and self-doubts, in her great and malicious sense of humor, in her marriage, in her frugality, in her fear of aging, and in her social consciousness. (Bond 59) They were both extremely outspoken while sparing no one's feelings with their comments. Virginia and Leslie both had strong personalities and rapid mood changes. Woolf portrayed her father, like her mother, through characterization in To the Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsey captures her father as a man of "baffling mutability, a lightening switch from the most lovable of men, to a 'famished wolfhound' and back again" (Gordon 22). This portrayal of Leslie Stephens relates to his uncontrollable rages and mood swings. Leslie Stephen not only controlled Virginia's mental development, but her intellectual development as well.
It is a fact of life that no one can remain young forever. Some teenagers cannot wait to grow up and get out on their own away from childish rules and parental limitations. For other teenagers the thought of the adult world conjures images of negativity and responsibilities such as going to work everyday, dealing with undesirable people, and being part of a stiff society. However, mediums do exist between these two contrasting worlds. Unfortunately, Holden Caulfield, an adolescent struggling with growing up in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, is not aware of these mediums. To him the two worlds seem to be as different as heaven and hell with no purgatory in between. Holden has no positive adult role models, his only concern is preserving innocence and the only people he truly cares about and respects are children. Holden Caulfield fears the transition from child to adult in J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye because childhood is so inviting and adulthood is so ominous.
In Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, the struggle to secure and proclaim female freedom is constantly challenged by social normalcy. This clash between what the traditional female ideologies should be and those who challenge them, can be seen best in the character of Lily Brisco. She represents the rosy picture of a woman that ends up challenging social norms throughout the novel to effectively achieve a sense of freedom and individuality by the end. Woolf through out the novel shows Lily’s break from conventional female in multiply ways, from a comparison between her and Mrs.Ramsey, Lily’s own stream of consciousness, as well as her own painting.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
War is an important theme in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a post World War I text. While on the one hand there is the focus on Mrs. Dalloway’s domestic life and her ‘party consciousness’, on the other there are ideas of masculinity and “patriotic zeal that stupefy marching boys into a stiff yet staring corpse and perniciously public-spirited doctors” , and the sense of war reverberates in the entire text. Woolf’s treatment of the Great War is different from the normative way in which the War is talked about in the post world war I texts. She includes in her text no first hand glimpse of battlefield, instead gives a detached description. This makes it more incisive because she delineates the after effects in personal ordinary lives. Judith Hattaway remarks that “Woolf’s view of the war is different. It does not figure in terms of mud and barbed wire but rather through its points of contact with the ordinary life left behind and in its destruction of a secure past. Woolf actually looks at the ways in which the war has changed contemporary ways of looking at history, social structures, identity and boundaries.” Formally the war is over but in so many ways – the after effects, devastation that has not been compensated for, the horror that lingers in people’s minds – the war persists. As Mrs. Dalloway walks along the streets of London, she makes a very naïve statement, “for it was the middle of June. The War was over “but for people like Septimus Smith the war continues in the form of its everlasting destructive impact on their mind, their body, and their lives.
Regardless if found in reality, both the present or past, or found in comparable literary works, the constant battle and endless war between order and chaos, emotions and thoughts, follows humanity mercilessly. These opposing concepts also take form in ideas such the thesis and the antitheses- that with every idea or concept, sooner or later an opposing force or contradicting theory will rise and ultimately challenge and change the previous state of society, individual or even in the natural world. The war that rages between order and chaos easily applies to this philosophical notion. Both states, chaos and order, seem to and most likely will continue to inevitably occur and then counter act the other. Although a society or an individual may experience a time of order and an alignment of society which promotes and preforms standards on both an ethical and moral scale, eventually the tides will turn and chaos will crash, spurred on by whatever opposing viewpoint there may stand to the previous one. This belief could mean that the world ultimately functions in chaos, that unless people achieve permanent order, no order truly occurs. However, besides the possibility that perhaps having a balance between order and chaos would actually provide the “true order” desired, it seems that rather then focusing on the society's order or chaos, as so commonly done, it would remain best to look inwards, at the individual. In other words, for people to find the balance of order and chaos, reason and emotion, restraint and passion, they must focus solely on their being and inner workings and develop, in their individual way, a means of maintaining that balance. In Virgina Woolf's acclaimed novel, To the Lighthouse, the characters Lilly Briscoe a...
The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic nature, as seen in chapter 17, “in rousing his rage a pitch above his malignity” there is hyperbole and melodrama as the cruelty that stemmed from his abuse in childhood has been passed onto Isabella in adulthood.
From far away, the lighthouse looks mammoth: a towering structure whose duty is noble and inspires reverence. Similarly daunting are the goals that one sets ten years before the goals can be completed, such as Lily Briscoe’s painting and James’ mending of the relationship with his father. The Lighthouse represents the struggle to attain a goal, and the light it shines the path one must take. The goals accomplished and the Lighthouse up close are both more friendly, pretty, and manageable, as characters in To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf demonstrate.