Figurative Language

Symbolism is the process of using objects, characters, figures, colors, or actions that mean

 The Lighthouse:  The lighthouse is symbolic of life’s journey.  The lighthouse means something different to every character: they each place their own personal goals in the lighthouse.  The characters in this novel have difficulties reaching the lighthouse.  It shows that life is a difficult journey where outside forces can cause harm.  The trip to the lighthouse is not so much a literal journey as it is a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. 

The Sea:  The sea is symbolic of life and how it is forever moving forward.  The sea, like life, can be lovely and beautiful but also destructive.  This is seen by the continuous ebb and flow of the water that is unstoppable and vastly powerful.

Allusion is a reference to a person, event, or place – real or fictitious - from history, geography, literature, or religion that people have knowledge of and can relate to.

Quote:  “What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages?  The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.  His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still.” (35). 

Quote Explained:  Shakespeare is a famous literary author that people can relate to.  Many people are aware of how long Shakespeare’s works have been around – yet what Mr. Ramsay is saying, it is nothing in the big scheme of time.

 Quote:  “He would argue that the world exists for the average human being; that the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life; they do not express it:  Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it.” (43). 

Quote Explained:  Shakespeare is once again mentioned in this quote.  As famous as Shakespeare is, he is not necessary for the arts nor the average human being to exist.

 Quote:  “…he had promised to talk ‘some nonsense’ to the young men of Cardiff about Locke, Hume, Berkely, and the causes of the French Revolution.” (44-45). 

Quote Explained:  The French Revolution and its importance is a part of history known to almost everyone.  It is something that should be learned – and that’s what Mr. Tansley planned to do which is seen in his sarcastic words ‘some nonsense.’

Repetition

Repetition is the process of repeating words or phrases for a desirable outcome, whether it is importance, imagery, or something else.

Quote:  “But he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the Lighthouse tomorrow; and she thought, he will remember that all his life.” (62). 

Quote Explained:  Mrs. Ramsay is very upset that her and her son cannot go to the lighthouse.  She repeats how sad she is over this many times, one is seen in the quote following.

 Quote:  “Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at – that light, for example.  And it would life up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that – “Children don’t forget, children don’t forget” – which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said.  It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.” (63). 

Quote Explained:  This quote is part of the repetition mentioned above, but also contains repetition within itself.  “Children don’t forget,” “it will end,” “it will come”- all of these are repeated in this quote.

Simile

Simile is the comparison of two things using the words “like” or “as.”

Quote:  “…and to follow her thought was like following a voice who speaks to quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity.” (24). 

Quote Explained:  Thoughts are compared to a voice using the word “like.” 

Quote:  “For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached the letter Q.”  (33). 

Quote Explained:  Thought is compared to keys on a piano using the word “like.”

 Quote:  “A steamer far out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed there curving and circling decoratively as if the air were a fine gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently swaying them this way and that.” (182). 

Quote Explained:  The path of the smoke is compared to the air being a fine gauze holding things together using the word “as.”

Personification

Personification is giving human qualities to animals or objects.

Quote:  “They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.” (32). 

Imagery

Imagery is the language that encompasses one or all of the five senses, these include sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch.   All of the quotes listed below do at least one of these five:

“She could see the words echoing as she spoke them rhythmically in Cam’s mind, and Cam was repeating after her how it was like a mountain, a bird’s nest, a garden, and there were little antelopes, and her eyes were opening and shutting, and Mrs. Ramsay went on speaking still more monotonously, and more rhythmically and more nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes and go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and gardens, and everything lovely, she said, raising her head very slowly and speaking more and more mechanically, until she sat upright and saw that Cam was asleep.” (115). 

“For the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her again.” (122). 

“The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and bringing the wave lapping blue to the shore.” (127). 

“The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter kilter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain-pipes and scatter damp paths.  Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the sound.  The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear.  Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.”  (128). 

“The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.” (131). 

“Moreover, softened and acquiescent, the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.  (132).

“But slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and cracked the tea-cups.  Now and again some glass tinkled in the cupboard as if a giant voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers stood inside a cupboard vibrated too.  Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud of something falling.” (133).

“And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it where rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonizing, but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonized, and at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls.  With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers in the bed by the window.” (141).

“Love had a thousand shapes period.  There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.”  (192)