To The Lighthouse Symbolism Essay

‘To the Lighthouse’ is a personal, self reflective and so moving a book in a larger sense because of its dense symbolic texture and themes. The book portrays a number of symbols, elements and themes such as art, light, death, marriage, patriarchy, family life etc. Death as a theme too plays a part in the book and in most of the modern literature texts as (Detweiler 1972) states that “The death moment in literature lends itself well to an analysis from the standpoint of phenomenology and structuralism”. This is true in the novel “To the Lighthouse” because Woolf writes about death in such a way that it relates to her experiences with death since she states that the book is like an elegy to her parents. The elements of being and nothingness of the ego and identity of the rupture of time and space inherent in the death moment are resonant in the …show more content…
In the second part of the book of “To the Lighthouse”, describes a ten-year stretch during which oblivion and “gigantic chaos” invade the abandoned house. (Brombert 2010) The middle section of the novel which is titled, ‘Time Passes’ is a section that shows us how time has passed by between the period of life and death, the absence, the loss of life, the toll time has and had on the subjects and objects of the house. Death in the form of natural forces just like how sickness and misfortunes take place to things that have life, tries to take over the house but is hindered at first by the remnants of the personalities which dominate the place (clothes, boots, Mrs. Ramsay's shawl, etc.) as well as by the memories of Mrs. MacNab. Finally, when those things have all been long mouldered to ruin and forgotten, and Mrs. MacNab has locked her mind concerning the house and its occupants, then Nature, Chaos, take over the house and are about to obliterate it, when by chance the Ramsays sends her to have it put in