On The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids and nobody’s around – nobody big I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and all and they don’t see where they are going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye.”


While on the surface The Catcher in The Rye appears to be the story of a young man's expulsion from yet another school, if we dig a little deeper the book is in fact a highly perceptive study of one individual's understanding or attempts at understanding his social conditions. Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing up in 1950s New York, has been expelled from school for his poor performance once again. In an attempt to get away from the school and his roommates, who he know finds difficult to be with he leaves school a few days prior to the end of term, and goes to New York to 'take a vacation' before returning to his parents' inevitable wrath. Told as a first person account by Holden himself, or rather as a conversation between Holden and the reader, the book describes Holden's thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown, symptomised by his bouts of unexplained depression, strong sexual feelings for multiple women for a few fleeting instants of time, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behaviour; some shocking and some simply heart warming, prior to his eventual nervous collapse.


The book follows Holden’s stream of consciousness as he moves from topic to topic. Holden’s talks move from mundane beginnings such as a commonplace object to previous life events which give deep insight to how Holden’s thought process has shaped over the years. Through the book Salinger has tried to bring out a teenager’s deep need for finding people around him whom he can understand and trust, a sense of belonging if I may say so. As Holden sees the world around him, most people are superficial or ‘phony’ and do not manage to hold his interest for long. As a result of this strong opinion he holds about people in general, Holden does not make too many strong friendships and can be seen partly as a loner throughout the book. During the course of his traveling about New York, Holden is constantly looking for company with whom he could spend time and in his attempts to do so we meet several people who help us get an insight into the inner mechanisms of Holden’s brain. His monologues, which constitute the majority of the book also act as the narrator from time to time to carry the tale forward. The reader's view of the world in which Holden lives is thus shaped by Holden's description of the world which the reader can immediately make out is unreliable at best.


We find that what Holden craves the most is a sense of stasis, which he believes is the only way a person can be true to one’s self and hence be “not phony”. Like every teenager, Holden does not like to see people around him and himself change. For this reason Holden is strongly attached to the Museum of National History and finds himself frequently drawn to the place. He finds the sense of stagnancy about the museum a way of endorsing its “non phoniness”, something which appeals to him to a great extent.


The story ends with Holden being sent to another school and being put under psychiatric treatment. With hindsight Holden’s description of the tale of events which led up to his current situation show that true to the teenage spirit which Holden has come to represent, Holden has not changed much. He still remains stubbornly transfixed with his own opinions about the world, his interpretations of people’s actions and the role he wishes to play in his life – The catcher in the rye, a silent guardian of the innocence of children, a person to protect them from the corrupting influence of society and adult life.


The brilliance of the book, which I believe is also the reason for it to be one of the most highly rated novels of the century, lies in the fact that Salinger has written the character of Holden in such detail, that while the reader is fully aware of the fact that Holden is an unreliable narrator and that his opinions cannot be taken at face value, one still finds himself wondering from time to time while reading the book whether it is Holden who is being judgmental about the world by declaring them all as fake and selfish or is it in fact people of the society who fail to see the hopelessness of their own existence and thus are being fake to add a semblance of meaning to their lives. The language used  by Holden is something which Salinger keeps up throughout the book and is so familiar to the reader that it is hard not to relate to some or the other incident being described in the book. The beauty of the book lies in the fact that often while consciously trying not to relate to a character like Holden, the reader cannot but help discover a hidden Holden Caulfield within themselves which makes reading the book a highly personal experience. There are several instances where Holden's behaviour, especially towards his sister Phoebe, touches the reader in a deep and profound way. Progressively through the novel the reader is challenged to think about society's attitude to the human condition - does society have an 'ostrich in the sand' mentality, a deliberate ignorance of the fruitlessness that existence can be? The book engages the reader to challenge his own beliefs and to take a stand with or against Holden Caulfield depending on which the reader ends up either loving or hating the book but in either case, is in for a very uncomfortable read and a lot of soul searching.

- Arnab Dutta
2009EE10379


References:
http://deadcaulfields.com/Catcher.html
www.sciforums.com/archive/index.php/t-22589.html

Review- The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day

The novel compiles a perfect portrait of an English butler Steven(the protagonist), who himself is the narrator. In the novel, he recapitulates during a journey about the thirty five years of his service to the great gentleman of England, Lord Darlington in his magnificent and age-old hall. The novel begins with a prologue giving details about his present life in the same hall under a new American based employer, Mr Farraday. After the short introduction, Steven starts off for a journey in his country offered to him by his employer Mr Farraday. During this journey he flashes on his diligent past at Darlington hall.

In the book the journey is divided into six parts, in which he recalls and ponders about various aspects of his life. He thinks of the importance of dignity in one's life and the post war views of England politics. He presents elements of his past life in fragments as if he wants to analyze their impact on his present.

Through out Steven's life, the most important thing for him is shown to be dignity as an English butler. According to Steven everyone should analyze this thing in his profession and continuously try to attain it.

Another important aspect, about which he mentions in the prologue, is the art of bantering. Steven perceives himself to be not good at bantering. But its an important part of his duty to give a good response to his employer, so he practices bantering on the people around him to improve his skills at it.

Another important aspect he throws light on is the post war political scenario of England, it can be regarded as a backdrop of war and Fascism. Steven's employer at that time, Lord Darlington is involved in politics. Lord Darlington had contacts with both the German and the British diplomats. Ishiguro, through Steven's views about his employer tries to show the views of English people towards Germany in the war.

Besides all these things, there is yet another center of attraction in the novel about whom there is a lot of talk, that is Miss Kenton(she was the house keeper at Darlington hall with Steven during Lord Darlinton's time). Miss Kenton is the lady whom Steven is going to meet during this journey after a very long time. He thinks a lot about her during the trip. Although Steven had feelings for her, during service to Lord Darlington he had failed to express them because he didn't want to comprise with his professional dignity.

Finally at the end of the reckoning journey, Steven is depressed that after having passed his entire professional life he had not been able to achieve any of the goals he had set for himself. He had made all the possible sacrifices, how he had denied all attachments, and not even expressed his feelings to Miss Kenton, but in the end, his life turned out to be a waste. This part is psychologically very absorbing. Till the ending, Ishiguro keeps the reader attached to the book.

Prasanjeet singh.

2009ch70152

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: The dissection of a Society

Chronicle of a death foretold is another masterpiece by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The novella is a mystifying and gripping work, not in its construction of plot and storyline, of which there is none, but in its dive into the psychology of the society as a whole.

The entire novel is built around the murder of one Santiago Nasar who is believed to have dishonored Angela Vicario. Marquez has interestingly used pseudo-journalistic techniques in writing the Chronicle, but has refrained from giving any explanation of most of the facts as such. The narrator interviews the people about the murder which happened 27 years ago, collects evidences, and builds entire chronology of the murder. The plot is revealed in the title itself and as we read a little we know of the storyline completely. The rest of the novel then revolves around the responses of various individuals to the impending murder and on the pretext of building the story further, mocks the patriarchal Columbian society in the face.

In the Chronicle, Marquez comes much closer to social realism than he did in One Hundred Years of Solitude. We see in Chronicle how a few irrational traditions can prevail over reason for the entire populace. Marquez makes us realize how deep-seated the honor codes are in our sub-conscious and how we unknowingly adhere to them. Women are expected to follow a certain level of conduct, they are expected to be pure and virgin and shy while men are supposed to be tough emotionally and physically. Marquez's characters embrace this 'womanhood' and 'manhood' but its an imposed misery on them. Chronicle in this way acts as a satire on the traditional and ritualistic aspects of a society. Angela Vicario has to be returned to her parents' house after she is proved not to be a virgin. And though the groom lives his life in misery later, and the bride's brothers don't wish to kill the perpetrator, it becomes a matter of honor and actions have to be taken. Marquez makes his point, and does so in length throughout the novel without writing a word about it. That indeed is a beautiful aspect of Marquez's work.

Chronicle is an intricately woven piece, handcrafted with such a beauty that the reader is caught in its outer view and the detailed textures are missed. In a small almost hidden line we see the narrator proposing to his future wife, and how ironical this is to the larger context of the novel! And the note lying on the floor is perhaps Marquez's jab on the literary culture in the Latin America. The book is a farce on the torpidity of the people in the region. Every individual in the town has a foreknowledge of the murder but nobody tries to stop it. The murders are desperately awaiting some meddler who might reason with them and stop their act, but the entire townis unperturbed. And if the reader wants a reason for it, he is given none! He is just left to wonder or scorn at the happenings. the surprises aren't over yet. We never know what makes Angela say Santiago's name in the first place, much less about what drives her crazy over her ex husband. Such mystifying behaviors of the characters go on and are imbibed excellently in the story.

The social behavior notwithstanding, many other events bring out the surrealistic nature of the novel. Magical realism has always been Marquez's fortress and we see him using it in a diminished amount in the backdrop of his storytelling. So dreams are correctly interpreted, bullets cross walls to turn sculptures to dust, and spirits are talked to. The final killing, so brutal, is shown in so obvious a way that it could happen to anybody. Leave alone magical realism, even the symbolism in the Chronicle is overwhelming. While we see the bishop avoiding the town, we see the priest killing Santiago for “the second time” showing perhaps the bigger criminal of his death. This truly brings out Marquez's command on the language.

Marquez is indeed an artist when it comes to language, and Chronicle, a beautiful piece of art.

In custody

In custody, a novel written by Anita Desai, is about Deven, a Hindi professor in an obscure university in a small and gloomy town named Mirpore. Deven leads a rather uninteresting life with a subdued passion for Urdu poetry. Deven gets an opportunity to break out of his monotonous life when his old friend Murad, an editor of an Urdu magazine, asks him to meet and interview Nur, the greatest Urdu poet in India. Seeing escape from the disrespected halls of his university and a hope to meet his childhood hero, Deven agrees to devote his Sundays (which finally turns into a long break) to the task of interviewing Nur.

The acceptance to travel to the ‘luxurious’ city of Delhi to meet and interview the famous poet turns into a chain of never ending problems for Deven. In his quest to record the verses by Nur in Urdu poetry Deven uncovers the ugly truth about Nur’s life. Deven loses his hero to the circumstances surrounding an aged fragile poet, who has lost his touch with his art and innovation. The protagonist of the novel finds himself in complete shock at the sight of Nur's house, an aristocratic chaos of uncultured people with royalties of lordly food and vulgar crude servers and a shrewd wife who sees Nur as her legacy to fame. The setting is like a king’s audience hall, where the king has lost all his power to old age. Nur has few desires and even fewer get stated owing to his fragility. Deven is drawn to care for the poet (he wipes up vomit surrounding the poet) partially cause he mirrors the poets condition to the condition of his favourite language Urdu and partially as he attaches fond childhood memories of his father to the language. However, to Deven's disgust and horror, the poet seems to take pleasure in the unscrupulous audience, where the poet begins by glorifying the gatherings by his old creations and ends them in state of partial unconsciousness.

As things progress in a similar fashion, Deven realizes soon that he is now too deep in to back out. He is exploited monetarily and emotionally, only to result in interviews with little poetry or Urdu, but more sessions on the sick aristocratic lifestyle. In the end Deven sees his dream collapse while simultaneously coming true.

The novelist has brought out the setting of old India in a very real way by depicting the patriarchal society, the communal beliefs and differences, the dying trend of Urdu and the importance of technical knowledge compared to arts and literature. Including hindi words like kebabs, biryani, surahi etc also add an Indian touch to the text. Anita Desai has targeted the sexist nature of Indian society. She does this via firstly, Deven’s wife, Sarla’s dissatisfaction and secondly by the bold attitude of Imtiaz Begum. With Sarla’s displeasure from her mediocre lifestyle being displayed not to her husband but to the kitchen walls, the author brings out the male dominance of the society. Additionally, Nur’s wife, Imtiaz Begum’s demand for herself and her work is Desai’s way to support freedom and respect for women. While talking of relationships in the novel, the friendship of Deven and Murad is seen lost to selfishness and coldness.

Communal hatred and misconceptions have been brought to light. Deven’s shift to Mirpore and his choice of teaching hindi present the pressure of religion. The sniggering behavior of his colleagues and department head show how language can become the identifier of religion, community, nationality and even political beliefs.

There lies a symbolism in the novel, in comparing the state of Urdu and the poet. The poet’s decline, fragility and surroundings are a mirror to the state of the language sickening, mocked and disrespected in various community circles. While Nur’s noble living is like a façade to his real state, his glorification of his poetry is a parallel façade of Urdu’s status in India.

The education system of India is also seen as backward as it seems not to see a livelihood in the field of arts or literature (Deven’s students take extra technical classes to get employment). The undue advantage offered to students from scientific backgrounds shows how technology can be a threat to history and culture.

Though the whole novel portrays a descending trajectory of Deven life, it also shows his perseverance towards giving it a meaning. The protagonist of the novel goes from being in the custody of society as a hindi professor but Urdu lover to getting the ‘custody’ of his childhood hero, Nur. So despite losing the perfect image of his idol, Deven actually gains the truth out of him. This I see as a success coupled in failure. The novel sensitizes the reader towards many issues while being artistic at the same time.

Nitish Goyal

2009ch70149

Siddhartha by Hermanne Hesse

SIDDHARTHA derives its name from the two Sanskrit words of "SIDDHA" which means to achieve and "ARTHA" which means meaning and is also a synonym for money or wealth and this is exactly what the novel is all about. It is all about an individual's search for the meaning of life which may lie in spirituality or in wealth. Published in 1922 in German and translated in English in the 1950's, the book is the most popular book of Nobel Prize winning author Hermann Hesse and is regarded as the most read Western book on India and its philosophy. The book gained huge popularity in the 1960's with the "hippie culture" as it was seen as a part of counterculture movement.The book can be said to be an offshoot of the psychoanalytic theory that had exploded in the European literature of early twentieth century.

The story is based on a boy named Siddhartha who is born into a Brahman family.He is a contemporary of Gautama Buddha .Hermann Hesse being highly influenced by the Indian philosophy of life has written this book partially on his experiences. He has either intentionally or unintentionally divided the life of Siddhartha into the four ashramas of Indian life(Brahmacharya,Grihashtha, Vanaprastha and Sanyasa) by which he maybe trying to say that Siddhartha is just a normal man who is not satisfied with the life he has and wants much more out of life than what he is getting .

Siddhartha lives in a village with his family and is greatly admired by the people for his intellect and his inquisitive mind and also for his looks by the girls of the village. He debates with the village elders over the essence and meaning of life. He is constantly followed by his friend Govinda who sees him as his guide. But Siddhartha at a very young age is dissatisfied with the knowledge of the Brahmins. Quoting Hesse"...they had already poured the sum total of their knowledge into his waiting vessel; and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still" He felt that the Brahmans performed the same exercises daily and have been doing so for generations without adding any meaning to their life. The same was his experience withe Samanas. He initially felt that Samanas would lead him to true knowledge but after years of meditation, fasting and bearing hardships, he finally sees himself at the same place as at the starting of his journey.
He then comes to know about a man named Gotama who is known to have attained enlightenment but he is in doubts whether any teacher can answer his doubts or help him in his quest for knowledge but visits him. He on seeing Goatama immediately identifies him with the calmness and serenity in his attitude and is the only one to do so. "Every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuos quiet, an fading light, an invulnerable peace"Siddhartha sees the difference in Buddha, the completeness in him, the feeling of neither happiness nor sadness but of content. But Siddhartha refuses to be his disciple feeling that he would not be able to reach nirvana on Buddha's path but would have to find a path of his own.
IN the next stage of his life, he is enthralled by the beauty of the world which he earlier thought of as 'MAYA' and marks the beginning of his 'Grihastha' life. On the first day, in his dreams he suckles the bosom of a women which symbolizes his re-birth as a man.He left all his teachings of Vedas and all the practices of Brahmans and started his search for the secret of life. He got attracted to a courtesan named Kamala and found a job. He got very rich and was regular on his love lessons with Kamala.Greed, lust , liquor overtook his pure soul and he started living an ordinary life. As he noticed that he is aging and realized his mortality he leaves the town.This marks the 'Vanaprastha' life.Then he joins the ferryman in his room by the river. But his son does not like this lifestyle and decides to leave. Siddhartha was always in search of true knowledge so that he could attain peace in his life but realizes peace does not rely on knowledge, Nirvana does not rely on knowledge but it is Wisdom that leads to Nirvana. This wisdom he attains with the help of the ferryman and the river. The Wisdom to be content with what you have and to find peace and harmony in your life ,to forget all your problems and rise above your wordly pleasures. It is this wisdom that cannot be communicated by a person or taught by a teacher though knowledge can. It is your wisdom which guides your knowledge and makes its meaningful.So,does he finally achieve his aim and he becomes a 'Sanyasi'.

The book(or, I guess the translation) is written in a very simple but beautiful language like "The Brahman was silent so long that the stars passed across the small window and changed their design before the silence in the room was finally broken". His structure of sentence has been very simple throughout the novel.He may be trying to give a hint to the fact that true meaning in its simplicities. The novel has some beautiful lines and creates picturesque images at the end. Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?” And he found: “It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”

The novel ,being a bit philosophical may not interest one and all but once you start reading you should enjoy it .It is about a 150 page novel making it enjoyable throughout. It is a nice enjoyable read and leaves an impact on you.Though the book revolves around the basic Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of body and soul, 'Maya(worldly pleasures) and the word "OM" but the author never goes into a detailed discussion of these subjects. As it was written mainly for Western audience, Hesse has not gone into factual details about the religion. He rather keeps it simple and enjoyable making it a light read.

The White Tiger

While flipping through “The White Tiger”, I was trying to get some insight of the book, but suddenly realized that I have reached the end and one of the reviews got my attention there

“Blazingly savage and brilliant… an excoriating piece of work, relentless in its stripping away of the veneer of ‘India Rising’ to expose its rotting heart…Adiga is going to go places. We’d do well to follow him.” – Neel Mukherjee, The Sunday Telegraph

Surely, it was enough to give me a thrust to go through this piece of fiction. While reading, I realized that “The White Tiger” offers a story which is a confession of a very complicated man. He is the first-person narrator of the novel. He wants things he has no monetary right to. Becomes a flatterer to settle in this world. Once he becomes an entrepreneur, uses tactics of rich with them- calling police. At the current day while narrating, he boasts too much, arrogant and thinks too much of himself. He calls himself a ‘Man of Action’, which is true. He lives with self-professed titles. Lately he cherishes solitude, a crazy hypocrite, disrespectful. He is totally against authorities, freedom wanting, hateful, devilish, greedy, self-important, wants to achieve everything, vengeful, jealous, flatterer, liar, unethical, fooling his truthful masters; unsatisfied at every stage of life. Tries to imitate rich, looks to loot fellow servants and also wants to be a hero among them, villainous smile after killing, devoted to Mr. Ashok, selfish.

The whole novel is presented as a collection of letters from a businessman, who is in fact, the narrator himself, to a Chinese premier, who is going to visit India. In these letters, he tells about his entire journey to become a success. This journey that has a taste of thrill involved in the narrator’s life, that how the phases in his life changed from worse to better and how he evolved from them. This novel creates a perception in reader’s mind about the desperate acts made by a man who tried to get rid of poverty, caste system, corruption and social discrepancies around him.

As the novel proceeds, with the turn of the pages, the phases of life of the narrator change. Later, the reader realizes that the narrator has unique capability of self-justification even for his wrong doings. He has a justification for his crime, thinking that it was necessary and quite justified in regards of his life.

“Being called a murderer, fine, but being called a murderer by the police. What the hell!”

He has his own perception for the society

"In the old days there were 1,000 castes...in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies."

And he is determined to become a big-belly man.

The novel has too often use of explicit and thought provoking Metaphors. For example, the narrator describes himself as “half-baked”. Use here may indicate that the narrator rose above the poverty to wealth, power and better life but that came with a cost. He became a criminal as lacked the self-knowledge and the narrator himself realizes this fact.

Frequent use of “Rooster Coop” and comparison of India to it, is captivating and fun for readers. The narrator has presented an analogy between daily life of Indian people and chicken packed inside a rooster coop. He has presented a philosophical view for his escape from the rooster-coop that no-one else could find. This kind of thinking of the narrator adds some complexity to his character.

“The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters and entrepreneurs. The coop is guarded from the inside. That’s the sad fact.”

The novel has element of surprise, showed through the narrator. This also shows his philosophical point of view for the things around him.

“They worship nature. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

This novel presents the narrator’s view of contemporary India. I believe that his point of view is quite narrow. He has presented India as the union of just two entirely different worlds. The book has shown a lot of negative aspects of India. The book has clearly polarized India between two categories “the rich” & “the poor”, but the diversity in the Indian Society is quite obvious. The reader needs to think beyond the scope of this book. Although the book has focused on very serious issues of caste, corruption, crime in Indian society but it is, overall, a short piece of fine literature.

ASHUTOSH KATIYAR

2006MT50432

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE -By Virginia Woolf

Very patently modernistic yet very different!

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is a semi- autobiographical novel by Virginia Woolf that meanders around the idea that -impermanence and unattainability underpin the construct of human life: It tries to hint that human existence is an asymptotic struggle to realize the intangible.

The novel may seem bleak on a glance, but the dullness never creeps in as Woolf lets the events unfold through the varied interpretations by her characters-thus the reader gets to watch from a combination of vantage points. The Ramsay house is a collage of individuals with a whole assortment of perceptions- be it Mrs. Ramsay, who found prevalence of domestic order reassuring, or be it Mr. Ramsay, a dissatisfied and rude metaphysician who craved for sympathy and pity. The novel is divided into three parts- THE WINDOW, TIME PASSES and THE LIGHTHOUSE.

The Window deals with making and rebuffing the plans to visit the lighthouse across the bay from the Ramsay house. Mrs. Ramsay is liked by all- family and friends- and has an almost protective attitude towards male characters, while Mr. Ramsay’s own children withdraw from him. Woolf’s writing, although very much in the modernist premise (in that the philosophical meaning is weightier than the plot), is quite different from what we have read in the course. In ‘To the Lighthouse’, meaning is reflected not in the complexities of language used but by the way sentences are structured and punctuated. It was difficult, at times, to decipher what Woolf was suggesting as some sentences (especially, Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts) were unusually long -the verb came after about 80 words after the clause in some instances. She employs this technique to perhaps imply that the character is pondering over the questions asked (by herself) along with the reader to grasp the meaning. It’s worth noting that while doing so, the language is kept pretty straight forward and direct. These digressions in Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts, for instance,

“Not for the world would she have spoken to him, realising, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked James's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle James's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley.Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.”

reinforce the extent to which domesticity comforts her. This skill with which Woolf conveys so much- character attributes, relationships- just by punctuating or structuring a sentence in a certain way, takes away the dullness of reading stretched out monologues.

The guest painter, Lily Briscoe’s character echoes author’s attempt to justify the need for observing through various viewpoints.

"Oh, but," said Lily, "think of his work!" Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."

She paints a portrait Mrs. Ramsay and eventually realizes that ‘fifty pairs of eyes’ are needed to do justice to the painting. She comes closest to the author with the painting being a parallel to the novel itself. Lily too fights against male chauvinists (Mr. Tansley- another guest) like the author did(through feminist writings).Woolf sometimes seems to be switching from the canonical third person narrative to a direct dialogue with the reader when voicing the views of Lily- again hinting at the similitude between Lily and her.

“Teaching and preaching is beyond human power, Lily suspected. (She was putting away her things.) If you are exalted you must somehow come a cropper. Mrs Ramsay gave him what he asked too easily. Then the change

must be so upsetting. He comes in from his books and finds us all playing games and talking nonsense. Imagine what a change from the things he thinks about.”

The second part- TIME PASSES, the shortest of all three, spans the longest period (ten years after the War). Half the family members die in this span. The narrator is displaced in this section. This kinked time scale shifts the readers’ focus from individuals to the changes time brings about. Inanimate objects like the Ramsay house replace the living characters from limelight. The change is reflected by the alteration brought about in the house conditions. And, the happenings in the lives of the characters are merely mentioned in brackets. The most striking point here is that even though practically the whole book is about Mrs. Ramsay, her death doesn’t get even one full sentence of mention. Doing so, Woolf masterfully highlights the enveloping impermanence.

[Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]]

The Lighthouse (last part) marks the return of the narrative style- viewpoint of various characters, and speed of time progress to that in THE WINDOW. The main feature of this section is the healing effects that beauty- of the lighthouse and Mrs. Ramsay’s memories, has. As the family finally departs for the lighthouse, grudges, which James and Cam Ramsay held against their father, dissolve. Lily starts painting yet again with new vigour and vision. Another point worth appreciation is that Woolf uses the same tool- the brackets- earlier marking death and violence, to give hope of survival in this section.

TIME PASSES -> [Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with

childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, theysaid, had promised so well.]

[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]

THE LIGHTHOUSE-> [Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side

to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back into the sea.]

It would be apt to say that presence of Mrs. Ramsay, the undisputed lead protagonist of the story, is felt in glimpses in each of the remaining characters in this last section, with every subplot ending on the affirmative.

- ISHA RUSTAGI