Thwack!! The three-foot wooden metric/standard ruler slammed down on the pink knuckles of the little boy’s left hand. “This is Geometry not Art Class,” scolded the wiry bespectacled teacher. “You must see the patterns inherent in figures on a plane, not doodle frivolous curly cues.” The boy scowled and rubbed his tender knuckles one at a time. He rather liked his scribblings. It was almost Spring Break and they reminded him of palm fronds whipping to the rhythm of the cool onshore breeze.
I don’t know what to make of To the Lighthouse. I want to hate it…and I do…ish. It seems quite the agonizing punishment to read tediously slow inner monologues of mostly unhappy people on what seems to be an unhappy vacation. Especially since my vacation, my spring sabbatical draws so near. But none-the-less, I suffer and I read, slowly, painfully, and with much indignation. My inner academic battles with my inner party animal who seems oh so close to winning the fight. As I read, however boring the text seems to rest on the page, I see glimpses of something faint, a ripple, so to speak, through the pages. Then… the echo resonates, the ripple grows. I hear voices more clearly and see (sea) waves break. Patterns emerge and repetitions, well repeat, both hiding in the story. Though patterns not in the Geometric sense but more like the palm fronds. They are not linear or quadratic, they are probably not quantifiable with the most advanced algorithm, rather, they exist as Waves (oceanic and rhythmic).
Dr. Sexson keeps saying that epiphanies litter this book. I have found a few, though nowhere near the 500 he claims exist. But I think I have found something somewhat interesting relating to these epiphanies. (I hope this isn't too much of a stretch, this discovery is the only reason I continue reading the book, to see if it holds true throughout). The most apparent epiphanies come in a rush, out of the seemingly bland; they are a tumultuous mix of myth and reverence. They crash over the characters wiping them clean in their frothy wake. What I’m trying to say is the Epiphanies feel like Waves crashing upon the shore. They come at rhythmic intervals, just as you are almost lulled to sleep a new crest appears. They are brief, sometimes no more than a few sentences. And almost all of them end with the sea.
During Mrs. Ramsey’s Lighthouse epiphany she tries to grab “hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight.” But “there was only the sound of the sea.” (64) At the height of her epiphany the light from the lighthouse shines on her, then the beam makes its long sweep out to sea, circles, and “rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!” (65) As exposed rock feels the frothy foam of a wave break on its rigid body, Mrs. Ramsey felt the delight of the epiphany on the floor of her mind. But the moment recedes like a wave, the ecstasy is over and Mr. Ramsey once again sees her “sadness” (65)
In another instance, ten pages later, Nancy finds a small tidal pool, and brings “darkness and desolation, like God himself, to the millions of ignorant and innocent creatures” (75) by blocking the sunlight from the pool. She feels this incredible power but then lets “her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on the wavering line of sea and sky” (75). This experience fills her with dread, she becomes “bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, here own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness” (76). Like Mrs. Ramsey, the feeling rushes over Nancy in a violent paralyzing wave. Her only release is to sit “listening to the waves,” brooding. Her reaction is different; her epiphany is a different kind of wave. She broods as the epiphany lingers within her much like a wave of a rising tide lingers on a beach. Low and behold, “the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach” (76). Unlike Mrs. Ramsey, whose epiphany is like a wave at low tide crashing into exposed rock, Nancy’s is an epiphany of a rising tide.
I don’t know what this all means but I am trying to establish a metaphoric method for comparing these epiphanies. Like I said they seem to be rhythmic and they seem to be patterned in the way tides and the ocean are patterned. Why, I don’t really know.
Then we arrive at the “Time Passes” section. Where as the rest of the book moves incredibly slowly, this section speeds through the future of the Ramsey family. To me this entire section is an Epiphany, not for any one particular character but for the reader. It is a repetitive cycle of dark bone-chilling winds, clouds, the creaking house, and turbulent waters, contrasted with mirrors, silence and Mrs. McNabb. It’s an epiphany of the storm cycle, crashing waves and dawn calms. Or maybe an epiphany of the seasonal cycle, violent winters mixed with still summers. Either way Mrs. McNabb arrives as turbulence recedes to calm or vise versa. Meanwhile the Ramsey family withers and the house falls into such disrepair that “one feather and the house, sinking, falling, would have turned and pitched downwards to the depths of darkness” (138). Throughout this section everything is moved, destroyed, rotted, moldy, repainted, repaired, rebuilt, or cleaned. But one constant always remains…the sea and the patterned and rhythmic crashing of waves.
Once again I struggle for the anagogic in this epiphany. I see glimpses of Eliot and the brevity of man. I see the futility of experience as Mrs. McNabbs memories, her experiences, do nothing to resurrect the house, rather the somewhat blurry image of the “lady in the grey cloak” only increase the homes aloneness. But I also see hope, that “all shall be well” perhaps. As Mrs. Bast, “stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them” (139). (Interestingly, Bast is the lioness goddess in Ancient Egypt. She was goddess of the Sun, protector of lower Egypt, and her temple was surrounded by man-made channels from the Nile River. They were probably calm bodies of water compared to the Nile. Food for thought)
As of right now, I haven’t finished the book. I am only done with “time passes.” But I would be willing to bet that many of the other epiphanies to come follow a similar pattern. I also would imagine that if we went through others found in class other similarities might emerge.
I find this discovery fascinating because one of the only things constant in this world (let alone the book) is the sea. Every 24 hours the tide rises and it falls. Storm cycles come in and calm cycles follow. The sea is like a natural metronome tuned to different beats for each different time in the cycle.
When I think of the sea in relation to To the Lighthouse. I can’t help but remember a sound so familiar from my childhood. I used to sleep on the beach at my families lake cabin. The sun would wake me each morning as it peaked over the Selkirk Mountains to the east. Before I opened my eyes fully awake, I would hear a sound quite similar and no louder than the sound water makes when it’s slowly swished through the teeth of a closed mouth. The sound repeated itself over and over and seemed to coincide with first rays of the morning light. They weren’t waves, they weren’t even ripples. The sound, I think, was the lake, while glassy calm from the dawn, expanding and contracting almost like a breath. The water sounded alive.
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