The famous Russian writer Boris Pasternak ever said, “Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life.” Like a coin always having two sides, the problem of life and death always interact with each other. In the 1925 published novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf points out that the view of life and death is rooted in individual consciousness. Some people die, their consciousness still live; some people live, their consciousness is empty, they are the walking dead. Although Clarissa has well material life, her spiritual life is empty. Therefore, the death of Septimus hints what she lacks: the necessity of recognizing individual consciousness, which makes the rebirth of mind not only in the
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Rather than living the life in miserable way, Septimus chose to follow the mind, to jump. The suicide ends his life in dramatic way; however, his mind which still live through later the influence to Clarissa Dalloway and readers. Suicide indirectly brings him the triumph of mind over the unconnected world. Instead of feeling coward to suicide as the doctor Holmes, Woolf twists the traditional meaning of suicide to function as the result of noble act. The reason for Septimus’s death is that rather hating to live consciously the unconnected word makes him has no choice to maintain his mind – his consciousness to communicate with others to reach the internal peace. That is, reach the high climax which shocks others. In this case, the meaning of death is probably not overstated but powerful. To take away the seemingly fool skin of suicide, what Woolf reveals to people is the positive nature of suicide, at least in the case of Septimus, Suicide is the self - …show more content…
Although both characters never meet each other, and their real situation is vastly various, Woolf parallels them at least in the aspect of consciousness, as Clarissa claims, “She felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away”(Woolf 186). At the moment, they are psychologically associated as they all suffer the problem of expressing consciousness with others. Different from Septimus barely connecting with others, Clarissa Dalloway has certain degree connection with others. However, the connection is merely based on her social identity which gained through her marriage, and the communication doesn’t rise from the button of the heart. She, like other people, who has submerged by the torrent of matter; she is living like the walking dead, although she wants to rebel the social norm. Thus, she never succeeds, and her consciousness has lost the battle with material desire. The dramatic and tragic death of Septimus gives Clarissa a panoramic perspective to review her own life. Fortunately, Clarissa awakens in the light of Septimus’s death and notices the importance of internal peace, “the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death” (Woolf 153). Thus, death is not something
Rather than living the life in miserable way, Septimus chose to follow the mind, to jump. The suicide ends his life in dramatic way; however, his mind which still live through later the influence to Clarissa Dalloway and readers. Suicide indirectly brings him the triumph of mind over the unconnected world. Instead of feeling coward to suicide as the doctor Holmes, Woolf twists the traditional meaning of suicide to function as the result of noble act. The reason for Septimus’s death is that rather hating to live consciously the unconnected word makes him has no choice to maintain his mind – his consciousness to communicate with others to reach the internal peace. That is, reach the high climax which shocks others. In this case, the meaning of death is probably not overstated but powerful. To take away the seemingly fool skin of suicide, what Woolf reveals to people is the positive nature of suicide, at least in the case of Septimus, Suicide is the self - …show more content…
Although both characters never meet each other, and their real situation is vastly various, Woolf parallels them at least in the aspect of consciousness, as Clarissa claims, “She felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away”(Woolf 186). At the moment, they are psychologically associated as they all suffer the problem of expressing consciousness with others. Different from Septimus barely connecting with others, Clarissa Dalloway has certain degree connection with others. However, the connection is merely based on her social identity which gained through her marriage, and the communication doesn’t rise from the button of the heart. She, like other people, who has submerged by the torrent of matter; she is living like the walking dead, although she wants to rebel the social norm. Thus, she never succeeds, and her consciousness has lost the battle with material desire. The dramatic and tragic death of Septimus gives Clarissa a panoramic perspective to review her own life. Fortunately, Clarissa awakens in the light of Septimus’s death and notices the importance of internal peace, “the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death” (Woolf 153). Thus, death is not something