The Theme Of Death And Death In Mrs. Dalloway

The way in which death is described and interpreted in the book Mrs. Dalloway vastly differs between characters; from death as a way of communication, to holding on to the things that you love, even as well as a symbol of people not being able to brave their own selves. One of the ways in which the novel describes death is as a way of communication, when describing what she believed death to be about Mrs. Dalloway stated, “Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them” (184). The part of the quote about death being “an attempt to communicate” is very powerful and seems to give off an overall feeling of hopelessness. This is because the quote does not state that people do communicate, it states that people “attempt” to communicate. The word attempt brings a negative connotation to this sentence, because an attempt is the act of trying to achieve something yet it is …show more content…
This quote claims communication from death is a thing from the past, yet what this quote does not directly state, is what caused this form of communication to be a thing from the past, as well as what the current purpose of death is. Next, the quote discusses people attempting to reach “the centre”, yet from the quote as well as the context around it, it is almost impossible to determine a definitive answer for what is meant by “the centre”. What the centre may mean, is the center of the communication is the goal people were trying to achieve by dying. Yet just as the quote says, the centre continued to evade them. This may in turn have lead to the continued attempts to reach the centre of communication, yet with every attempt failing, people may have started to realize that this dream of people’s was impossible to reach and therefore led death being an attempt to communicate become a thing of the