TTL #7
The final chapters of To The Lighthouse are a catharsis because the characters focused on all make amends and reconcile with the characters they have had conflicts with throughout the novel. James, Cam, and Mr. Ramsey all sail out to the lighthouse together, even though James and Cam resent their father’s tyranny. However, on the trip, “everybody seemed to come very close together and to feel each other’s presence, which they had almost forgotten” (183). James compares his father to a wheel running over someone’s foot because like the wheel, Mr. Ramsey hurts people, but it is not necessarily intentional just an unconscious accident. James concludes that he does not hate his father, but instead his father’s personality and mindset. As Mr. Ramsey reads a book on the trip, Cam recognizes that he is not the terrible person she and James always saw him as: “And watching her father as he wrote in his study, she thought (now sitting in the boat) he was not vain, nor a tyrant and did not wish to make you pity him. Indeed, if he saw she was there, reading a book, he would ask her, as gently as any one could, Was there nothing he could give her?” (190). Cam switches from seeing her father as a tyrant to someone who is gentle and wants to provide for is children. Although she does not know how exactly to describe him, she implies that he might seem like a bad person but he is really just misunderstood. When they land at the lighthouse, Mr. Ramsey praises James, which is something that has never happened before. Between his father’s praise and finally going to the lighthouse, James is “so pleased that he was not going to let anybody share a grain of his pleasure” (206). James, like Cam, realizes that his father was not a cruel tyrant all these years but instead a misunderstood man, and James is finally able to appreciate. Meanwhile, on the shore, Lily watches their boat sail as she works on her painting. She thinks about Mrs. Ramsey and everything that she represents. Lily wonders about Mrs. Ramsey’s life and concludes that she never truly understood her, and thus, Lily never appreciated her. When she analyzes Mrs. Ramsey, she understands her better now than ever before and is able to finish her painting without a concern about what may happen to it. The main characters of the last chapters all reach an understanding with the characters they have conflicted with throughout the novel, producing a feeling of catharsis.
