To the lighthouse: book report

José Luis Siller 3ºA #17

To the Lighthouse

By: Virginia Woolf

This nopvel is divided into three parts, “The Window,” “Time Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.” Each section is fragmented intostream-of-consciousness contributions from various narrators. And it starts like this, well, “The Window” part starts just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay brings their eightchildren to their summer house in Scotland. Across the bay from their house there was a large lighthouse which James their youngest son wanted desperately to go to the lighthouse, and Mrs. Ramsay toldhim that they would go the next day if the weather permitted it. James gets excited, but Mr. Ramsay tells him coldly that the weather looks to be like that for a long time.

The Ramsays host a numberof guests, including Charles Tansley, who admires Mr. Ramsay’s work as a metaphysicist. They also host Lily Briscoe, a young painter who was at the moment making a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. TheRamsays wanted Lily to marry William Bankes, an old friend of them, but Lily wanted to remain single.

Time passes more quickly as the novel goes to the “Time Passes” part. War breaks out in Europe. Mrs.Ramsay dies without a reason one night. Andrew, their eldest son, is killed in battle, and his sister Prue dies from an illness related to childbirth. The family no longer vacations at itssummerhouse, which falls into a state of bad care, plants take over the garden and spiders take over the house making nest inside it. Ten years later the family returns and Mrs. McNab, the housekeeper, employs afew other people to help set the house in order. They rescue the house from omission and decay, and everything is in order when Lily Briscoe returns.

In “The Lighthouse” part, time returnsshifting points of view. Mr. Ramsay declares that he and James and Cam, one of his daughters, will make a trip to the lighthouse. On the morning of the trip, delays cause him to lose his temper. He...