To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is a story that centers around the the value of memory to self. The story does this by centering around the characters that Woolf writes about, and their thoughts pertaining to their memories of one another. Woolf’s writing in To the Lighthouse is rich in her characters, Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay, their kids, and their friends’ thoughts and feelings towards everything they are going through, and more importantly, their thoughts and memories of one another. The reader learns about the characters’ through the complex thoughts Woolf’s characters’ have. The importance of memory is shown in how essential it is to each character. Without their memories, it is arguable that none of the characters would have a “self”. They use their memories so often to form opinions of each other, remember feelings they had towards each other and to …show more content…
Alice falls down the rabbit hole in such a way that allowed her to contemplate the amount of time she was falling; she felt as if she was falling “slowly” (Carroll 10). This is where things start to become quite switched up. Alice falling down the rabbit hole like this plays into memory because she had never fell in such a way before, her memory having no recollection of a fall ever being like that. This was the first fallacy of many to come of Alice’s memory. Another example of the inconsistency of Alice’s memory is her constant height changes. When Alice drank from the bottle that read “drink me” to the two sides of the mushroom, everything she ate changed her size. This caused her to be somewhat confused as to who she was; Alice wondered if she were some of her classmates from school rather than herself (Carroll 180). With the change of her size, Alice assumes she can not be herself anymore. Because she has no memory of who she is. in regards to her body, this reveals how infallible memory is in Alice’s Adventure’s in
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.
Pause, reflect, and the reader may see at once the opposing yet relative perceptions made between life, love, marriage and death in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In this novel, Woolf seems to capture perfectly the very essence of life, while conveying life’s significance as communicated to the reader in light tones of consciousness arranged with the play of visual imagery. That is, each character in the novel plays an intrinsic role in that the individuality of other characters can be seen only through the former’s psyche. Moreover, every aspect of this novel plays a significant role in its creation. For instance; the saturation of the present by the past, the atmospheres conjoining personalities and separating them, and the moments when things come together and fall apart. This paper will explore such aspects of To the Lighthouse while incorporating the notion that the world Woolf creates in this novel is one that combines finite and infinite truth. A created world that recognizes both limitation and isolation and how these themes are interrelated in and throughout the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Conceptually, Woolf combines all of the aforementioned realities of life into the presentation of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, a married couple that seem to stand for both accurate and visionary approaches to the reality of life. It is important, then, to consider that To the Lighthouse is not only representational of life, but that it also catches life. It is thus the goal of this paper to readily show why this is so.
In story the family’s memories bring distress to them. However, these reminders enable them to survive when they face extreme danger. Remembering his real family’s traumatized the boy, and memories often of his old life come back and haunt him. As the boy recalls his previous life to the old women, he says, “My mother has earth in her mouth and sings when she sews or prepares the most delicate of foods, my mother tells tigers of tigers and birds and swinging contests, my mother lies in the burning village in a grave so shallow it was not ever to her ears, but earth was in her mouth (76).” The memories cause the boy pain as he greatly misses his mother, but later on, memories like this allow him and his new family to survive. On guard duty at night, the boy uses his memories of his old life to stay awake and to tend the fire. Failure to do so would have resulted in certain death for the family because of the extreme coldness. In this quote, the memories of Kim Sin Gyu’s father and his mother’s keep him awake. “…I would have lost some of the fingers, and Father was dark with anger. This is a foolish boy, he said…Mountains, forests, valleys, caves and great open plains. And most especially the palace of the queen…More wood again? How quickly it burns down. (104)” Also, memories allow both Kim Sin Gyu and the old man to connect with each other because both of their uncles wanted them to be hunters, but their fathers disagreed. This memory strengthens the bonds between them. Although the old man regrets his decision to abide by his father’s wishes, he recognizes the young boy’s future is still not decided, and begins to help him. Memories have also been a curse and a blessing to me. Last year, I played in a Level 3 USTA tennis tournament. I got to the semifinals where I played against a 3 star player (the highest ranking is a 5 star). I lost to this kid 3-6, 2-6, and the memories of this loss
Memories are symbols that are used to demonstrate the progression from the past into the development of one’s current personal identity. Furthermore, personal memories serve to investigate one’s thoughts. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro are 21st century works that reflect on the use of memories to enhance personal thoughts by impacting perspectives. Addressing and reflecting on thoughts and feelings towards previous events creates and alters perspectives. In Native Guard, Trethewey develops a perspective on her past and history through her memories, and in Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro uses Kathy’s memories to develop her actions and decisions. Both, Tretheway and Ishiguro, demonstrate that a memory portrays a symbol that serves to reflect on the past in order to develop personal identity.
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
Memory is a very powerful tool of a person's mind. It can cause a person to relive a positive incident or do the exact opposite, meaning it causes the person to relive a painful moment. Memory is portrayed as a destructive activity in Beloved because it causes many characters to revisit their painful past. There are many incidents throughout the novel that helps to endorse the destructive quality of memory. First of all destructiveness is portrayed through one of the main characters, Sethe. Another character that memory affects negatively is Paul D. A third prisoner of bad memory is Stamp Paid.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Introduction by D.M. Hoare, Ph.D. London: J.M. Dent and Sons
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is a novel dedicated to human emotion and humanity’s innate yearn for interpersonal connection. Woolf’s novel shows how we humans relate and react to the world around us- how we feel about the events we experience, what we perceive about the people we so desperately want to feel close to, and how raw human connection can help us find purpose in our live. Whether it is Mrs. Ramsay tirelessly working to aid her husband in his war against himself or Mrs. McNab contemplating the lives of the people she cleans after, all the characters in Woolf’s novel lack human closeness and try to find that closeness through interpreting what those around them experience. As the novel and the First World War progress so do
Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' is a fine example of modernist literature, like her fellow modernist writers James Joyce and D.H Lawrence. This novel in particular is of the most autobiographical. The similarities between the story and Woolf's own life are not accidental. The lighthouse, situations and deaths within the novel are all parallel to Woolf's childhood, she wrote in her diary 'I used to think of [father] & mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind ….(I believe this to be true – that I was obsessed by them both, unheathily; & writing of them was a necessary act). Woolf, Diary, 28 November 1928) Woolf like many other modernist writers uses stream of consciousness, this novel in particular features very little dialogue, preferring one thought, memory or idea to trigger another, providing an honest if not reliable account of the characters lives. There novels motifs are paired with many of the novels images. The novel features two main motifs that Woolf appears to be interested in examining, firstly we notice the relationships' between men and women and the other appears to be Woolf's use of parenthesis. The novels images only become apparent once these motifs have been explored, allowing the reader to examine the relationships between the different characters.
The interdependence of memory and identity is not unproblematic. Self-assessment and assessment of the characters in the novel will lead one to realise that manipulation of the past is integral...
To the Lighthouse is a novel full of hidden messages, symbolism and history. All of these elements make “To the Lighthouse” a novel that is not easy to read. There are no clears signs within the novel telling us “Hey look here!! This is where the action is!!” The novel also lacks to mention when the events all takes place, who is speaking, and lastly does not give us an indication in what way we should think and feel of them. Virginia Woolf’s novel opens with an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked yet. This answer is given by a character who is not identified or described, and is addressed to the child who is sitting on the floor near a “drawing room window” in an undisclosed place that is also not described or identified. Also within this novel, there is not much respect for the standard novelistic conventions of clock time or consecutive action. Just when the audience starts to think that they’ve begun to establish an order of events, they start to realize that Woolf seems to take pleasure in confusing her audience by inserting an event or idea that has happened in the past or she anticipates a reaction, so that time in her novelistic world, the past and present and future, seem to flow into one another in an unbroken stream of consciousness.
To The Lighthouse is one of the masterpieces of the modern era produced by Virginia Woolf. Symbolism, fragmented organization, stream of consciousness narrative style, and the unusual chronological treatment are all techniques that were utilized by Woolf to allow her to explore the issue of feminism. She was able to immerse the reader into the subjective reality of her characters emblematizing Lily’s journey as the sprout of feminine voice. Thus, Woolf’s efforts paved the way for the modern female writer and unshackled her from the masculine form giving her the freedom to write as she wished.
As an extremely unconventional novel, Mrs. Dalloway poses a challenge for many avid readers; Woolf doesn't separate her novel into chapters, almost all the "action" occurs in the thoughts of characters, and, the reader must piece together the story from random bits and pieces of information...
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1951. pp 131-133.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Introduction by D.M. Hoare, Ph.D. London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1960