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The Lighthouse
The sea symbolizes the natural world and its utter apathy towards human life. The natural world – which encompasses time and mortality – proceeds as usual regardless of whether humans are happy or grieving, in peace or at war. Like the incontrovertible fact of death gradually claiming human youth and beauty, the sea slowly eats away at the land, dissolving it minute by minute. Like the relentless progression of a clock’s hand, the waves beat ceaselessly on the beach and slow for no one. The sea itself is unchangeable, and the many different descriptions of the sea throughout the novel in fact describe shifting human opinions. As if it were a mirror, people see in the sea a reflection of their own state of mind. Thus, when Mrs. Ramsay feels safe and secure, the waves sound soothing, but when she feels disoriented, the sound of the waves seems violent and ominous. Thus, during World War I, the ocean appears senseless and brutal, but in peacetime it appears orderly and beautiful.
The Sea Quotes in To the Lighthouse
The To the Lighthouse quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Sea. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Window, 3
Quotes
…the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, ‘I am guarding you—I am your support’, but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow…
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The Window, 4
Quotes
…because distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.
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The Sea Symbol Timeline in To the Lighthouse
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Sea appears in To the Lighthouse. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Window, 3
Mrs. Ramsay is suddenly alarmed to hear the sound of waves unaccompanied by the rhythms of human conversations and cricket games. As white noise behind human...
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The Window, 8
...passes the window just as Mrs. Ramsay reads about the Fisherman reluctantly going out to sea, thinking ‘it is not right’ and yet going. Mr. Ramsay nods and continues on the...
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He walks to the edge of the lawn and looks out at the sea. The perspective zooms out to observe that it was Mr. Ramsay’s destiny, “whether he wished...
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...Ramsay walks towards the house stopping now and then to turn and stare into the sea, then turn back away.
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The Window, 9
...birds sang through them” and all of life’s “little separate incidents…became curled and whole like a wave ” carrying one and delivering one to the shore.
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The Window, 11
...how it is “so much her, yet so little her” and feels it is “stroking…some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight.” She feels she has...
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The Window, 14
...her own, too, Nancy imagines that one of the little tide pools is the whole sea, turning “the minnows into sharks and whales” and herself into some God-like “fantastic leviathan” able...
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The Window, 17
...sailing, Lily immediately puts Mr. Tansley at his ease and he prattles on about his sea prowess while she thinks how the cost of Mrs. Ramsay’s ease has been her own...
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...Rose’s arrangement of the fruit bowl, which looks to her like “a trophy” from the sea floor, “Neptune’s banquet,” a whole world to explore. She notices Mr. Carmichael, too, admiring it,...
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The Window, 18
Mrs. Ramsay descends downstairs and finds Minta, Paul, Lily and Prue planning to go watch waves on the beach, a plan she giddily encourages, saying how much she wishes she could...
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Time Passes, 3
...worth of dark nights pass, “full of wind and destruction.” The trees are ravaged. “[T]he sea tosses itself and breaks itself.” It would be futile for any sleeper to rise and...
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Time Passes, 6
Amidst the sea scenery, a battleship intrudes. Nature remains indifferent and “that dream…of…finding in solitude on the beach...
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Time Passes, 10
...war is over and peace declared. Lily falls asleep at the summerhouse listening to the sea. Through the window murmurs “the voice of the beauty of the world” calling sleepers to...
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The Lighthouse, 3
...about her stay at the summerhouse ten years before. She recalls skipping stones on the sea with Mr. Tansley while Mrs. Ramsay sat on a beach rock writing letters and, by...
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The Lighthouse, 5
...of iron”) and her memory of sitting in silence beside Mrs. Ramsay looking at the sea. As Lily, “dipped into the blue paint, she dipped too into the past there.”
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The Lighthouse, 6
...fish to use as bait for a fishing hook and throws the gouged body into the ocean .
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The Lighthouse, 9
Inside a parenthesis, Lily thinks of the sea as silk stretched across the bay. She thinks of distance’s power, how it has devoured...
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The Lighthouse, 11
On the lawn looking at the sea, Lily thinks about how one’s impression of and feelings about people depend so much on...
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...to the edge of the lawn still holding her brush to look out at the sea for Mr. Ramsay.
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The Lighthouse, 12
...drowned. James and Cam dread Mr. Ramsay exclaiming the line, “But I beneath a rougher sea,” but, to their relief, he does not. They are nearing shore and their father praises...
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