To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

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To The Lighthouse published in 1927, by Virginia Woolf.

Set directly before and after World War I, the story follows the lives of a small group of people, (specifically Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe) as they navigate through their daily lives each facing and striving to overcome their individual conflicts while in the Isle of Skye, of the Hebrides (a group of islands west of Scotland) on vacation. But before I go more in depth regarding this group of people and their struggles, I will first provide some context (plus my presentation wasn’t long enough).

The author Virginia Woolf was born into a upper-class English household in 1882 as Virginia Stephen and had three full siblings and 4 half siblings, for the first thirteen years of her life she and her family would spent every summer at their summer home called Talland House, located in St. Ives, a beach town, memories of this place eventually find its way into To The Lighthouse. Known as one of the most prominent modernist writers to date, and famous for her non-linear writing style (when you write scenes and sections in a non-chronological order), so it’s to be expected there’s some fundamental differences to what is typically present in a novel like those of the very structured Victorian Era norm opposed to what’s present in “To The Lighthouse”. For instance, in this novel there isn’t really a protagonist, which is in part due to the anonymous narrator (who focuses on one character at a time) often transitioning from one character’s perceptions to another as demonstrated in my passage, the point of view changing from that of Lily Briscoe to Charles Tansley.

But the novel does have main characters, Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay, and Lily Briscoe. An accomplished m...

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...el better like Mr. Ramsay) and is troubled at the thought of one such work ending up forgotten in an attic. Her lack of confidence and resolve is shown to gradually dissipate as one gets closer towards the end of the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys or doesn’t mind reading metaphors, figurative language, and tangents. One may also want to possess a rather advanced vocabulary or else you might end up in the same situation I was in, using the dictionary every 2-3 pages I read of the book. That being said, this book is written in a beautifully poetic and rhythmic manner; and is the first novel I read that managed to blend the human thought and action so naturally.

This concludes my book report. It’s time for the next victim I mean presenter.

(though that may be because it’s the first novel I’ve read in the stream of consciousness genre).

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