The Characters Hidden Values and Needs in To The Lighthouse Essay

The Characters Hidden Values and Needs in To The Lighthouse Woolfs chosen role as an author is to uncover the conceal values and needs of her characters psychologies, and by extension of this, those of her readers each frequent realization of the characters is a real and vividly personal epiphany, the like of which real-life persons do not start out such a feel for on a day-to-day basis the characters are in a very real sense perhaps also self-aware to be considered real. (Tansley and Lily at the dinner table each understand their situations perfectly.) The underlying message Woolf seems to be seeking to present is that this self-knowledge is not necessarily inherently of any worth Tansley, for instance, is unable to control his desire to subjugate others in his own mind to prop up his own insecure self-esteem his realization of this fact is not an em fountainment to alter the fact. Lily feels restrained in a similar fashion years after their utterance, Tansleys words (p94) wo men cant write, women cant paint, though modify with the knowledge that clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful (also p94), still cannot be completely discounted from her mind. Lilys struggle to marshall her memories into a cohesive and enduring monument of canvas is a metaphor for the intensity of human experience the significance being that ultimately it does not matter for that intensity leave alone not be retained even then, no matter the struggle once captured the reality of the situation fades, and it is time to move on. Her efforts are symbolic of the inability for the power of memories and emotions to be lastingly captured so strong is this urge that her desire to imprint a meaning upon events perpetuate... ...have been more verbose and less nebulous in comprise (in MS ... more explanation is given p233, in MS, Tansleys atheism is more emphasized and contrasted with Lilys belief p227 and there are records of many other modify outs or smoothing re vision.) It is not difficult to imagine that Woolf would have been exceptionally gratified by a comment which she made about another author in a critical essay that a work offered (p248) a complete presentation of life ... as always he creates carelessly, without a word of comment, as if the part grew together without his willing it, and broke into ruin again without his caring. Woolfs version is more forced but perhaps this is what is necessary for a work of such questing magnitude. probable spontaneity requires patience. Works Cited Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse, Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 1992