To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is an experimental novel, in which Woolf uses stream of consciousness to depict family dynamics, gender relations, and attitudes toward the ontology of art and the artistic subject. The lighthouse itself is an important symbol in the novel in that it brings bright light to ships at sea, only to give way to total darkness, a clear parallel to Woolf's manic and depressive episodes: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay “When darkness fell, the blow of the lighthouse, which had landed so authoritatively on the carpet in the darkness…” (144) One of the most important elements, if not the most important in To the Lighthouse, is time. During the first and third sections of the book, time passes slowly as Woolf uses the characters' stream of consciousness and inner time, rather than an external source, to show us her progression. It is in the middle of the novel that there is a change and time passes much more quickly: "Through the short summer nights and the long summer days... and then, night after night, and sometimes in high noon when the roses were brilliant and the light projected its shape clearly on the walls..." (145) "The night and the day, the month and the year followed one another without form... But the calm and brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of the night" (147) It is in these and many other sections of the novel that we can clearly see the passage of time and, in thinking about the idea of ​​night transforming into day, then back into night, we can easily relate this to the inner world. struggles with depression, as we go from depressed, to euphoric, to depressed again. Another element of this second part of the novel, which can be considered as a sign linked to bipolar mood swings, is the rapid deterioration of the house once the family left: “The house was deserted. He remained like a shell on a dunes to be filled with dry grains of salt now that life had left him. (149)This section followed by the equally rapid recovery of the house, which took ten years, is covered in less than twenty pages. “And everything looked,” thought Mr. Carmichael, as he closed his book and fell asleep, “much as it did years ago.” (155) If we take a closer look at the inner lives of the characters in the novel, we see that some of them show signs of depression. First, let's take a look at Mr. Ramsay, who has the most obvious symptoms. He is a well-known mathematician and philosopher, with published works and his own students who admire him; however, he has difficulty interacting with others, especially his own children and his wife: “The extreme emotions which Mr. Ramsay aroused in the bosoms of his children by his mere presence; standing, as now, thin as a knife, narrow as a man's blade, smiling sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and ridiculing his wife” (8). From the beginning of the novel we know that he is a strange and cold man, but later we can see that he is also talkative, much like Woolf herself because of her illness. He even calls himself “irritable” and “touchy”. Mr. Ramsay is also a very insecure and even sad man, which is clearly seen when he wants his wife to reassure him that she loves him. “He wanted something… wanted her to tell him she loved him… heartless woman, he called her; she never told him she loved him. (134) In this part of the novel, we can also see that although Mrs. Ramsay is intimately involved in the lives of her family and.