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  • Essay / Shaping Loss in "To The Lighthouse"

    Throughout To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf details the many struggles of the Ramsay family and their guests to achieve happiness and order in their lives. There are many obstacles to this fundamental human pursuit, but loss is one of the most powerful and universal. Various forms of loss haunt and torment almost every character. Fearing a limited and meaningless existence, Mr. Ramsay dreads the loss of time and relies on Mrs. Ramsay's support to ease his pain, but when she dies, he becomes a helpless victim of time and is forced to rise above self-pity about his fate. and rumination. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essay As a metaphysician and writer of questionable success, Mr. Ramsay cannot face the fact that he is getting older; the overwhelming and unstoppable procession of time deprives him of the years necessary to become a great man. He wasn't born a genius, but he hopes to fight to become one. In Mr. Ramsay's conceptualization, human thought progresses like the alphabet, and although he has traveled all the way from A to Q, he may not have time to reach the top, Z. Even more frustrating is his conviction that if he succeeded, having reached Z, like Shakespeare or the other greats, he would still not be “eternal”. Either way, time will swallow it up and it will be forgotten. He can't even survive the small stones he hits in frustration; he is left to languish around the grounds, wallowing in self-indulgent complacency, muttering ineffective phrases such as "But me, under rougher seas." Mr. Ramsay's inability to accept his fate leads him to seek comfort and love from his wife, Mrs. Ramsay. Time and time again, he relies on her beauty to ease his pain. During his first reflection on the intellectual alphabet, he is paralyzed with fear by the thought of his loss, but upon seeing his wife, he notices that he is content to simply enjoy and contribute to the beauty of the world - too ephemeral as this beauty is. or his offering, perhaps. Moreover, in the last scene of "The Window", just before the couple goes to bed, Mr. Ramsay interrupts his own pensive rumblings to observe his wife reading poetry, and once again concludes that her struggle is fruitless . He looks at his wife, waiting for a thinly veiled expression of her love for him, looking for proof that he is worthwhile and wonderful - even if he is not a genius. However, the greatest example of Mr. Ramsay's need for his wife is in "Time Passes", where he is seen stumbling down a hallway at night, his arms outstretched and empty, "Mrs. Ramsay having died quite suddenly the night before ". ". Obviously, he needs Mrs. Ramsay to alleviate the loss of time; he needs her presence to restore his physical and mental balance. In the third section of the novel, "The Lighthouse", Mr. Ramsay is portrayed as a man who, although always troubled and longing for sympathy, has grown as an individual. There is even hope that one day he may achieve true joy. On the boat trip, he still plays his. role he dramatizes his struggle in the hope of receiving sympathy from his children, once again muttering: "But I, under rougher seas However, the best example of Mr.'s complex mixture of despair and progress." Ramsay lies in his interactions with Lily Briscoe, the only "real" woman in the house after Mrs. Ramsay's death, looking horribly downcast, he staggers towards Lily, and she immediately feels suffocated by her grief. he wants sympathy, and when she can only compliment his shoes, she expects a look that.