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Suicide in Mrs. Dalloway

Woolf uses Septimus’s suicide as a way to show the suddenness of mental health. Virginia Woolf struggled with mental health throughout her lifetime, even going into periods of insanity. She used her own personal experiences to portray Septimus and his mental health issues. She describes his death as a powerful statement rather than an act of cowardness, which is how suicide is most often thought of as. Septimus’s suicide was romanticised, and it seemed to be a way of taking back his own life. Rather than letting the doctors take him to the mental institution, he kills himself. This allowed for him to die with honor, rather than have his life be taken away from him. When Septimus began to have suicidal thoughts, he described it as “quite alone, condemned, deserted”. During this time period, mental health was much less understood than it is today. Septimus, being a veteran with mental health issues was not understood. Even today, a large portion of the veteran population struggles with...
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Time is Sporadic

Reading “Mrs. Dalloway” right after reading “The Mezzanine”, led me to automatically make comparisons between the two novels. A notable similarity that I noticed between both is that the novels are set over a very small length of time for how we normally think a novel should be. Both of these novels break the rules for how we think a timeline for a book should be. “The Mezzanine” covers the thoughts of Howie during his one hour lunch break on an escalator ride. Anyone could write a novel about their thoughts during one hour of their lives, but it would probably be excruciatingly boring. The focus of “The Mezzanine” was to make the unremarkable seem remarkable. While on the escalator ride, Howie discussed his thoughts of everyday scenarios, such as using the men’s restroom, eating lunch, and he even marvels at the concept of tying his shoelaces, milk cartons, and plastic straws. “Mrs. Dalloway” also occurs over a very short amount of time. This novel covers the length of one day, from ...
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It's all in the little things

In our lives, we are constantly busy, waking up in the early hours of the morning, rushing to catch a bus, scrambling to finish a project for school or work. We often find ourselves caught up in the problems and challenges we face in our life. However, Howie in “The Mezzanine” has a different outlook on life. Howie pays attention to the seemingly menial parts of life. He has an almost child-like perspective on his life because of the simpleness of what he describes. However, his thought process is relatable because of the complexity of the way he articulates and describes the objects or events that he is experiencing. It appears as though he has found a way to be content in his job and lifestyle that many people might find menial or boring. His extreme attention to detail may be a way of entertainment, or a means of distracting himself from his life. Howie’s way of life may seem undesirable, as it appears to lack purpose. Even if this is true, he has something that most people don’t--...
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