The Voyage Out was my
favorite Virginia Woolf novel throughout the course. Although, I have a feeling
that The Waves would become my new favorite Woolf novel. I cannot say so for
sure now because I have not completed it yet.
Nonetheless, The Waves has blown me away with its stream-of-consciousness. To best understand what Woolf has done, one could imagine a long thread; a thread that is so knotted and tangled and twisted that it is almost impossible to untangle.
Because the thread is knotted, it would seem as if the thread, once untangled, would make one long thread. However, once you succeed in untangling it, you find the thread is in six perfect pieces. You realize that the coloring of each of the six pieces of thread is imperceptibly different. Each piece of thread represents its own distinctive characteristic, yet your mind pictured one whole thread – perfectly uncut.
That is how the six characters in The Waves are presented; although each character has their own individual traits and personalities, together they make up one individual; one consciousness. They are so intertwined, like pieces of thread tangled together, that it seems as though they make one single long thread.
Woolf breaks boundaries as she creates a work of fiction that is not just complex fiction, but colorful poetry. She creates a maze of consciousness where fictional characters explore the depths of their Self, and their mind – from childhood to adolescence to adulthood – through vivid images, through nature, through expressed emotion; the stream of consciousness develops on its own a certain rhythm that is unbreakable and unlimited; exactly like a wave; a wave that keeps coming and coming; going and going. It washes over you and another one washes over you in a never ending cycle; a consciousness that is dependent on others but one that is also insistent on continuity.
Nonetheless, The Waves has blown me away with its stream-of-consciousness. To best understand what Woolf has done, one could imagine a long thread; a thread that is so knotted and tangled and twisted that it is almost impossible to untangle.
Because the thread is knotted, it would seem as if the thread, once untangled, would make one long thread. However, once you succeed in untangling it, you find the thread is in six perfect pieces. You realize that the coloring of each of the six pieces of thread is imperceptibly different. Each piece of thread represents its own distinctive characteristic, yet your mind pictured one whole thread – perfectly uncut.
That is how the six characters in The Waves are presented; although each character has their own individual traits and personalities, together they make up one individual; one consciousness. They are so intertwined, like pieces of thread tangled together, that it seems as though they make one single long thread.
Woolf breaks boundaries as she creates a work of fiction that is not just complex fiction, but colorful poetry. She creates a maze of consciousness where fictional characters explore the depths of their Self, and their mind – from childhood to adolescence to adulthood – through vivid images, through nature, through expressed emotion; the stream of consciousness develops on its own a certain rhythm that is unbreakable and unlimited; exactly like a wave; a wave that keeps coming and coming; going and going. It washes over you and another one washes over you in a never ending cycle; a consciousness that is dependent on others but one that is also insistent on continuity.
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.”
“But when we sit together, close,’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.”
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