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To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Themes
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Themes
Mr. Bankes, to consider another, is an unselfish friend and a dedicated scientist, yet
he is a selfsufficient bachelor. He is, nevertheless, a lonely widower craving for the
affection of children.
The climax of the first section occurs at the dinner, a brilliantly dramatic
communion-meal where each ordinary ego, with its petty aggression and
resentment, is gradually blended with the others into a pattern of completion and
harmony.
The fortunes of the Ramsay family suffer a number of serious setbacks. Mrs.
Ramsay dies, Andrew is killed in the war, and Prue dies of childbirth. yet, we are
given to understand that Mr. Ramsay’s work will endure for the fate of his books
was somehow tied up with the Waverly novels. Also, as the next section proceeds
to demonstrate the family continues to develop. The central section of To The
Lighthouse, therefore, demonstrates not the victory of natural chaos over human
order, but rather the reverse. The forces of destruction are defeated by man’s power
and will to live.
And a few pages on, just before the arrival of the forces of renewal in the house, in
that moment, that hesitation when dawn trembles and night pauses”, the lighthouse
beam as an image of expansion and release (life-love hope) and contraction and
confinement (death-destruction-terror) held in relation, entered the rooms for a
moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked
with equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw” Thus the
three moods-loving care, tearing apart, and equanimity-are so well represented by
the light. It is only through multiple perspective that one gets a comprehensive
view of life.
Doubleness of Reality
In the third section, as Lily begins her painting a second time, her brush descends
in stroke after stroke. “And so pausing and so flickering she attained a dancing
rhythmical movement, as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes
another, and all were related.” Thus, in echo of the lighthouse beam itself, her
vision begins to emerge in stroke and pause in alternation, and the truth, the reality,
which suddenly laid hands upon her, emerged stark at the back of appearance and
commanded her attention.” In other words, as the light flickers, as it goes and
comes back, Lily begins to see the course that her painting was to take. This
flicker, which to an ordinary observer is an endless dull repetition, holds Lily’s
mind and enables her to discover the truth and reality that the appearance signifies
to her. The stroke and pause of the lighthouse beam symbolize the problem of
subject and object and the perception of the nature of reality. Reality has always a
doubleness which can be understood only through a double vision.