To the Lighthouse Time Passes, 3 Summary & Analysis

A whole autumn and winter’s worth of dark nights pass, “full of wind and destruction.” The trees are ravaged. “[T]he sea tosses itself and breaks itself.” It would be futile for any sleeper to rise and “ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore.” Inside a parenthesis, Mr. Ramsay reaches his arms out in the hallway on a dark morning and, since Mrs. Ramsay has died suddenly the previous night, his arms “remained empty.”

As the novel speeds up and tracks the cyclical time of the natural world, human structures of meaning fall to the wayside. Indeed, Mrs. Ramsay’s death which is, from the human perspective, an incredibly important event, is only recorded in a one-line parenthetical.

Active Themes

Quotes

Literary Devices

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse: Time Passes, 3 Summary & Analysis

Everything you needfor every book you read.

Everything you need for every book you read.

Everything you need for every book you read.

To the Lighthouse: Time Passes, 3 Summary & Analysis

Everything you need
for every book you read.