Mrs. Dalloway

This novel is the work which describes a day of Clarissa Dalloway which is a main character. The young man called Septimus appears parallel to her day, too. The story of Dalloway is that she reviews her who gets growing old while recollecting her past. Septimus once went for World War as the member of a party. He experienced the death of his war comrade close. He became mentally damaged by the result. He intends to commit suicide now. These two people are really unrelated as you know, and they never meet each other in this work. However, what would Dalloway think when she knew the suicide of Septimus? How was the life of Dalloway influenced from the death of Septimus? I want to talk about these.

Dalloway is a 52-year-old woman who belongs to an upper class. Generally, I feel that the age of 52 years old is not yet the age which you think about death. However, because Dalloway has experienced many things and they never come back, she might have felt close to death by looking back on her who was past. I was impressed by Mr.Yoshida's phrase "Because you feel the temptation of death, you are frightened at death." I think Dalloway felt close to death still more by recovering from the big disease.

When I consider to here, I am not mysterious even if Dalloway commits suicide finally. But she doesn't die after all. At the stage of the first draft of this work, Dalloway was to die. But Seputimas dies instead of her. But, I feel sense of incongruity from the expression of "instead". That's because nobody usually thinks that they don't die because of death of Septimus.

The reason that Dalloway gave up suicide is that Dalloway knew death of Septimus while she thought about suicide and she projected herself on him. By doing so, she supposed that she had experienced death once. There is life simply because there is death. So she was able to think only that she lived now. I thought that death of Septimus would let life of Dalloway be outstanding more.

[353 words]