This passage comes from the very beginning of the book, just as Clarissa Dalloway is heading out to purchase flowers for her party. It sets a very specific and well-exemplified theme of the book, which becomes very important in tying together all of the events and points of view in the book. The theme is that of time and it’s decisiveness, its persistence. The phrase “the leaden circles dissolved in the air” is used many times throughout the book. The “leaden circles” refer to the hour that is being struck from the circular, leaden bell in the Big Ben clock in London. The sound of the hour dissolves and falls upon the city, and no one is outside its reach. It’s persistence is exemplified as this phrase is repeated many times, showing that time continues no matter what, and people grow old no matter what.
Monday, September 29, 2008
First a warning, then the hour.
“There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.” (Woolf 5).
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2 comments:
Excellent lead off, Harper -- identifying the time and the repetition and tying into the greater text''
I wonder if the bell's leaden nature has any significance -- why include that detail? why distinguish it from other bell?
Maybe Woolf was thinking something like the Odyssey's "rosy fingers of dawn" with this repetition, but I didn't read Homer's Odyssey. I don't know why he said that: something about bards remembering that stock phrase so they could find their place in the story? It's a placefinder in the narrative.
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