Welcome to the Wasteland

Oddly enough, some nursery rhymes have rather dark themes. Ring around the Rosie has its origins from the plague and yet we have young children dancing and laughing to the lyrics (?) with the meaning of the words they're chanting lost to them. Same goes with London Bridge and its falling down.

However, instead being of innocent morbidity of those rhymes, The Wasteland is blatantly so with its own rhymes. The meaning is not very obvious at the beginning, but the last few parts mention death by name and suffering by theme. But despite its depressing topic, The Wasteland fails to faze me. Talk of inevitable perishing and such definitely involves questions that even constant brooding will not provide a satisfactory answer. That is why I find it much easier to not care about the issue whatsoever. I understand death and am not naïve enough to believe it won't happen but contemplation of these saddening topics should not derail from the enjoyment of life, which I think is something Virginia Woolf failed to take into account as she wrote about burning moths and and shell shock.

A message to all: life is infinitely worth living.

Song of the Dead

"Three young ladies laughed in musical echo" (Joyce 10). 

"A chorus of voices" (Joyce 28). 

Music, particularly that of song, is very recurrent in in James Joyce's The Dead. Metaphors such as the above can be found practically on every other page, with at least an indirect mentioning of singing among all the singer heard during the party. This harmony, the serenity and organized atmosphere, is in contrast with Gabriel's hectic position at the gathering, him perhaps having a rather awkward time there interacting with other guests and the hostesses. 

As both a symbol and a metaphor, the music and musical references may stand as vehicles for the concept of comfort and skill in the social environment. The figurative language goes as far as to mention a famous tenor to mention a literary tenor. Those with musical talent (or at least showcased it, be it via actual performance or through metaphor) lack the social anxiety that Gabriel feels. Harmony and melody is the measure of social standing.

In the Way

After reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, I maintain my stance in its lack of appeal to all those without strong philosophical longing and the enigmatic presentation of such philosophies. The messages that can be construed make almost a mockery of society as it was in the immediately post-WWI. Doctors, as Virginia Woolf was apparently known for despising, are very genuinely terrible when they suffer from a destructive combination of both malpractice and power in the community. A patient is entrusting his or her body to physicians and a physician with a medical know-how that hurts more than heals are truly something society can do without. And yet, those very same people are rewarded by parties while they are the ones who are oblivious to a regret they should have: Sir William Bradshaw had the most in driving force of Septimus's death. Almost a spiteful irony. The decorated soldier killed by the doctor meant to heal the reason the soldier was decorated. Compared to this, the regrets that plague the other characters are superficial, but a regret's magnitude can only be felt by the person with it. No amount of empathy or identification will completely share an experience, even when characters are protrayed as realistic as the author was capable of. Real humans have trouble being empathetic to other real humans as it is.

End of Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway claims to enjoy life. Her party, which is supposed to be the embodiment of this enjoyment, is dimmed by the mention of Septimus's death and the presence of the Bradshaws. After a novel of a lifetime's worth of pensive regrets condensed into one day, an action that had occurred relatively recently. Depite the death, the party goes on, even entertaining the ones who indirectly brought about the suicide. The assembled characters are all of rather high social standing and talk of comoarably superficial topics and lament is kept to a minimum.arties are meant for people to enjoy themselves after all. These people live their lives but their souls, their reason for living is lacking: they have no purpose in life but to cast judgement on others and spend their time in self-gratification and self-satisfaction. Even Sally, who Clarissa had but endless praise for, has changed her ways to conform with society.

Septimus's suicide was to escape such an oppressive society that would go to condemn the mentally unstable. On the opposite end of the spectrum would be Mrs. Dalloway and her peers, conforming and reaping the material benefits.

Should knowing life will be full of regrets stop us from trying to have as little as possible anyway?

Philanthropy

Post Regret

The events in Mrs. Dalloway take place over the course of a single day. It's about as slice of life as anything can be. The day is not terribly important: Mrs. Dalloway seems more or less accustomed to hosting parties and the various meetings with those around her are only slightly more than mundane, nothing life re-defining (as of yet, anyway). In exploration of why Virginia Woolf wrote this novel and why it has the acclaim it has, perhaps we must look at why and how the book was written rather than what it was written about.

Settling on the fact that stream of conciousness reflects reality, why is Mrs. Dalloway depicted as realistically as possible? Many conclusions can be drawn from this: to warn of regret, to show how time changes people, to understand how a person goes about a day. All of these go hand in hand. A human mind can think of potentially thousands of different thoughts every day and they will often linger in the sections for memory. Having even broached the topic of regrets is going to occupy the conciousness of any person for a while, no matter how much he or she wants to stop thinking about it and forget about it (this is even happening to me as I write this). 

However, I ponder if Woolf's message is not to warn about regret but rather to assuage any fears of them. Mrs. Dalloway, with her fair share of regrets, lives her life more or less comfortably, an outcome she would not have had had she'd chosen a different path along the journey of her life. She's not terribly happy but she's not sad about her life either. The only path we know is the path we take. It is natural to have regrets that we dwell on far too much, but be sure to realize you don't regret the life you're living now.

What's to Like

I, personally, have three different categories for sorting the books I read in terms of preference: books I like, books I dislike, and books I am indifferent about (by far the largest category). Mrs. Dalloway sits unceremoniously within the indifferent category. While the novel may be hard to follow at times, I don't share the derision some of my classmates feel about Virginia Woolf's writing style and I actually find the regrets Clarissa Dalloway expresses to be somewhat relatable, albeit on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, nothing about Mrs. Dalloway as of yet has had ample appeal to me. 

My taste in books are usually for more fast-paced novels. This would usually be more action-oriented stories rather than sentimental thoughts. Knowing how characters think and feel is still an important part of any story but actions are more readily reflective of a character's ideals or morals. While actions and events do occur in Mrs. Dalloway, the characters seem very passive, as if they were simply letting the actions happen to themselves, and then wallowing in their own self-pity (Septimus with the sky-writing, Mrs. Dalloway and Peter). Despite the passivity, this does accurately portray real human thinking. No one has profound thoughts at all times and most of our thoughts are utterly boring to an audience. And we whine constantly. 

That's not to say we don't have interesting thoughts from time to time, though. It's just rather troublesome to find them as they must be sifted from the endless clutter that is the drawl of human thought. Gems will appear if words are put in enough different combinations, which is why I can't place any book within the category of books I dislike, barring truly dreadful prose.