Mrs. dalloway

by virginia woolf (excerpt)

septimus warren smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too. the world has raised its whip; where will it descend?

everything had come to a standstill. the throb of the motor engines sounded like a pulse irregularly drumming through an entire body. the sun became extraordinarily hot because the motor car had stopped outside mulberry's shop window; old ladies on the tops of omnibuses spread their black parasols; here a green, here a red parasol opened with a little pop. mrs. dalloway, coming to the window with her arms full of sweet peas, looked out with her little pink face pursed in enquiry. every one looked at the motor car. septimus looked. boys on bicycles sprang off. traffic accumulated. and there the motor car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. it is i who am blocking the way, he thought. was he not being looked at and pointed at; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose? but for what purpose?

this excerpt is an example of woolf's use of as an experimental narrative form. from a description of the scene, we are transported into the mind of the harrowed war soldier, septimus. words such as wavered, quivered, burst, and throb, give us a sense of his the description of the scene is reminiscent of the following line from a poem by william butler yeats:

(1)
a. simile
b. the stream of consciousness technique
c. parallax
d. rhetorical questioning or rhetoric

(2)
a. inability to focus on things or inability to concentrate
b. love for horror and a precarious life
c. intense anxiety and fear
d. increasing mental vigor

(3)
a. "an aged man is but a paltry thing, / a tattered coat upon a stick"
b. "the best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity."
c. "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
d. "i must be satisfied with my heart, although / winter and summer till old age began"