Importance of Brackets in Virginia Woolfs To The Lighthouse

Importance of Brackets in To The Lighthouse [Here Mr. Carmichael, who was reading Virgil, blew out his candle. It was midnight.] [Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.] [Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they said, had promised so well.] [A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.] [Mr. Carmichael brought out a volume of poems that spring, which had an unexpected success. The war, people†¦show more content†¦Carmichael, who like to lie awake a little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather longer than the rest (125). This is foreshadowing, because he is the character in the brackets who lives and prospers after the war - Mrs. Ramsay, Andrew, and Prue all die within the confines those brackets - so Carmichaels candle burns rather longer. The narrative discourse of each death in brackets 2-4 has its own tone, as though each were told by a different person. In the second, where Mr. Ramsay stumbles around after Mrs. Ramsay has died, sounds like family mythology. His dependence upon her is so well-known that of course the effects of her death would be devastating upon him. Yet he did not seem to cope with life very well even before she died. In the novels first section, he storms around the house, wondering if he will have a legacy, not connecting with anyone but his wife. Has he really changed from the first section of the book to the third? No. He still blusters and orders people to do his bidding. In the third bracket, which tells of Prues death, the tone implies vagueness, as though there were a scandal or secret attached to it. Connected with childbirth might connote abortion or miscarriage, and the string of words, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they said, had promised so well might indicate that it looked as though (promised) Prue could beShow MoreRelatedFishing For The Meaning Of Life1878 Words   |  8 Pagesof Life How Virginia Woolf Explores Universal Truths â€Å"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. While the ultimate moral of this saying is that teaching as opposed to providing direct relief is more beneficial for the student in the long run, the saying also suggests that the teacher’s contributions will transcend his or her lifetime. Similarly, the concept of transcendency is explored in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse as Woolf delves