Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in To the Lighthouse, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time
The Meaning of Life
The Nature of Interior Life
Art and Beauty
Gender
Summary
Analysis
Inside a parenthesis, Lily thinks of the sea as silk stretched across the bay. She thinks of distance’s power, how it has devoured Mr. Ramsay, Cam, and James so that she feels they have “become part of the nature of things” and are permanently lost. The smoke from an out of view steamship lingers in the air.
Lily’s metaphor turns the sea into a kind of canvas (fabric stretched over a surface). In a perspective similar to Cam’s, Lily feels distance extinguishing the meaning of the Ramsays for her until they are “lost.”
Themes
Literary Devices
