The Effect of The Main Figures to The Theme of 'Life and death'

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 With all the traits of characters above, it’s clear that all of the main figures inside the story were living a inconsistent life painfully. Because of the pain deep inside their hearts, there were dreams or goals which supported themselves to survive on: even though Clarissa felt regretful to the past and discouraged about the future, she still pretended that the life was wonderful because of her original aim that she wanted to be the woman like a powerful man. Peter failed his life which should have been romantic and ideal, but he was optimistic for his dream about being with Clarissa again. Hugh was looked down and knocked by others; there was no words of expression to show his mind at all— he was totally numbed about life. Mrs smith who was near to be mad with the disease of her husband, however, still believed that her husband would be alright because of her deep love and expectation to her husband; Miss Kilman who lived in a world which was full of the filthy and indecent stuff in her eyes still chose to love and embrace and even gave herself a motto— 'Knowledge comes through suffering,'(Woolf, 94). They were all living in the pain but still lived. Everybody wanted to live their ideal life, but unfortunately no one in this book had ever achieved except one— Septimus Smith who chose to die after he survived through all the agonies the war left to him. For him death was the best way to 'live' or to show others that death is the best gift to life. For him, death meant freedom: 'The death instinct in Freud Theory operates under the Nirvana Principle: it tends toward that its destructive manifestations would be minimized as it approached such a state.' (Marcuse, 1985, 14)

Or there was another reason why they chose to survive on the world that never gave them what they wanted— the sense of proportionality or satisfaction. They gave up at first, even though they had goals and ambitious dreams, they just felt life like that was beautiful enough and worth living: 

' We live our lives, do whatever we do and then we sleep— it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump put of windows or down themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: and hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we're ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city,the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.'(Cunningham, 225)

Whatever it is, Woolf tried to make the readers notice that they lived in a life which was not that worth living. And how about death in her eyes is? '...death is stronger than I am, ......Nothing, I know had any chance against death,' (Woolf, 1961, 6) Woolf had the admiration of death many times and meanwhile her view of death was really clear in her diary: 'I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual. I like, I see, to question people about death.' (Woolf, 1953, 167)

Virginia Woolf was influenced by Freud Sigmund who believed that 'will to die' is one of the most original nature of human—being: 'Since we haven't gone through the experience of death and since death doesn't exist in our unconscious, we can't actually fear death itself. When we say we are afraid of death, according to Freud, we may fear something else—such as abandonment, castration, various unresolved conflicts, or otherwise fear of death may be the outcome of a sense of guilt' (Drobot, par. 3) or '..the final goal of life is death, a return to that blissful inanimate state where the ego cannot be injured.' (Eagleton,139). So we can see death which is the one major meanings of life in Freud's theory is worthier than life for her. In this story she wanted to show the agreement of this viewpoint and created all the various characters as many as she could to show the truth of her view of life and death— if you live a life like that: it's tiring, annoying and threatening which make your dream harder and tougher, make your mood bluer and  more and more depressed, go die because that is the reason you live.