To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf Transcending Death Essays

To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf : Transcending Death Transcending Death in To the Lighthouse The greatest obstacle to identifying a purpose for human life is the inevitability of death. Why should a human being strive for any goal when death will always be the final result of his striving, and after death he will be oblivious to any positive or negative effects of his lifetime actions? Virginia Woolf tackles this dilemma in her novel To the Lighthouse by presenting characters who attempt to transcend death either through accomplishments in art and science, or by nurturing other human beings. Mr. Ramsay and Charles Tansley take the path of intellectual accomplishment; Mrs. Ramsay represents the path of human nurturing. Although the characters derive some comfort from their efforts to transcend death, they are also tormented by the fear that they will not succeed in their strivings, and come to doubt that successful transcendence is even possible. Woolf never resolves this conflict in the novel. Instead, she maintains an ambivalence, illustrating both the benefits and the pitfalls of the two transcendence strategies. The dilemma of transcending death has traditionally been answered through belief in a God who can grant salvation. Christianity promises its believers that if they strive for salvation, they can avoid death and enjoy eternal life. To the Lighthouse is distinctly modern in that God is rejected outright: How could any Lord have made this world? Mrs. Ramsay asks herself, concluding that the world is too full of suffering to have been created by a divine savior (64). None of the other characters base their hopes for transcending death on divine salvation either; they consistently strive for results in this world. To the Lighthouse includes two characters who attempt to transcend death through intellectual accomplishments: Mr. Ramsay and Charles Tansley, both of whom are philosophers. The predominance of intellectuals in Virginia Woolf's novel could be explained by her own life in the British intelligentsia. However, intellectual endeavors are essentially the same as other human endeavors in their risks and rewards. It may be that Woolf was simply writing about those endeavors which she knew best, but intended her points to be much more widely applicable. Woolf makes explicit comparisons to more traditionally heroic kinds of accomplishment in describing Mr. Ramsay's struggle to analyze his degree of intellectual success: Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help...Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again...Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him... (34-35) The hope of transcendence for people who endeavor in any field, whether it is art, science, politics, business, war or exploration, lies in achieving recognition for their accomplishments. If they do great work, they tell themselves, they will be remembered by future generations and thus achieve a measure of immortality. But all endeavors are inherently risky; one can never be sure how well one will succeed, or how much one's peers and posterity will notice. Mr. Ramsay expresses his desire to transcend death through intellectual accomplishment most clearly in his lengthy mental soliloquy on levels of achievement. He uses the analogy of an alphabet, in which people advance from A toward Z as they achieve greater intellectual feats. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q, thinks Mr. Ramsay, proud of his current achievements but acutely aware of how far he still has to go (33). His next thought is full of doubt about his ability to succeed: A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him. He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R-- (34) The flash of darkness initiated by the closing of the lizard's eye is a symbol of death, reinforced by the ancient association between reptiles and denial of salvation. It is also significant that Mr. Ramsay