the tag on the wall as a representation of the

Virginia Woolf

“Everything’s moving, falling, moving, vanishing… We have a vast upheaval of matter. (Woolf 89). In Va Woolf’s 1917 “The Tag on the Wall”, the narrator is highlighting on the day the girl saw a marking on her wall structure and became utterly perplexed by it. As she stares with the wall, the thoughts in her mind seem worthless, just unique ideas strung together because they enter her mind. The lady claims to never be able to remember anything, which is the real aim of her reveries in this stream-of-consciousness narrative. After further thought, however , it is clear that she is seriously describing the idea process as well as its challenges, and exactly how difficult it might be to focus when one is get over with believed.

Because the story clears, the narrator attempts to spot the first time the girl noticed the mark. This can be accomplished by her recollection in the way the fireplace lit in the pages of her book, and how your woman was having a cigarette, making it obvious that it was both winter and after her dinnertime. At this point, her memory can be serving a purpose, helping her focus on the mark and find out what it is. However as the lady sees the fireplace, her head wanders for an old fantasy of a fire-colored flag waving over a fort, as knights in battle march by in front (Woolf 83). This kind of, she says, was “an old extravagant, an automatic expensive, made as a child perhaps” (Woolf 83), and she describes that it is a relief to be cut off by the view of the draw, thus closing her 1st reverie. This can be the first occasion that visitors experience the wandering mind of the narrator, and the mention of the childlike quality shows the immaturity of the fantasy and its not enough connection to what she is genuinely thinking about.

Her thoughts jump quickly to the mark on the wall membrane, and then right away she declines back into daydreams, this time contemplating how exactly thoughts work, because they “swarm” a brand new idea so aggressively and then disappear, as if nothing ever happened (Woolf 83). This idea is put at an extremely interesting stage by Woolf, seeing as as soon as the narrator proves the idea that thoughts can come and go in a quick, she leaps back to the mark. Not merely has the lady now stated that thoughts and way of doing something is impermanent, we quickly observe this for action as the lady abandons the discussion of considered to consider the mark once again. Each time she actually is brought back to her topic with the mark, her mind bears her apart swiftly in order that she will make no improvement in discovering what it actually is.

The narrator uses this with an idea which the mark has been made by a nail, which usually sends her into another reverie, now about what could have been hanging there. She demands it was a “miniature”, and accompanies this kind of assertion which has a colorful but unnecessary explanation of the female in the little. Without ever telling her audience why, she begins talking about the previous owners’ redecorating behaviors, and their particular designs based on each area and the age of the place. This catches visitors off protect, confirming that thoughts will be fleeting and disconnected. While she reconnects with the indicate, the narrator’s thoughts go towards the thought of thinking on its own. She is struck by how common thoughts are however how they are gone in an instant. The concept something is above as soon as it occurs, and cannot be recovered, is definitely emphasized as she exclaims “Oh! Special me, the mystery of life! The inaccuracy of thoughtTo present how very little control of our possessions we have! ” (Woolf 84). These “possessions” will be moments, thoughts and tips that are not tangible and cannot be grasped to, which is why they can be so fleeting and turned off. The following lines where the narrator begins to depend the things she has lost and immediately reduces into expressing “what cat would gnaw, what tipp would nibble…” (Woolf 84) highlights her mental distance from every thing she is thinking about.

Whilst her suggestions that thoughts are fleeting and quick to go away are accurate, the narrator’s audience can not be sure that she is as trustworthy as the lady seems. Even as she is taking into consideration the images this wounderful woman has lost, most probably all of the occasions she has misplaced her educate of thought, she manages to lose that thought too and goes into declaring things like “three pale blue canisters of book holding tools” (Woolf 84), which will sounds similar to an alliterative melody than an important thing she is desiring. It is very easily understood that this is a “stream of consciousness” narrative by simply her deficiency of dialogue and unrelated progressive, gradual ideas during. Woolf, throughout the narrator, succeeds in making use of this style in order to prove the idea her narrator is thinking about. As she is telling viewers that thoughts are impermanent, unreliable thoughts, she is also showing us how they affect a normal stream of thought for a “real” women, and distract her from her focus – the tag on the wall membrane. Through this, Woolf achieves a great accomplishment in pushing every reader to butts their thoughts and concepts, and how they will affect the everyday target.