"So they crossed, Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Warren Smith, and was there, after all, anything to draw attention to them, anything to make a passer-by suspect here is a young man who carries in him the greatest message in the world, and is, moreover, the happiest man in the world, and the most miserable?"
This one sentence characterizes Woolf's views on the importance of the individual perfectly. The hyperbole she uses ("greatest message in the world") shows how important this idea is to Septimus; he believes that he has truly figured out the meaning of life and wants to share it with the world. This desire to share symbolizes the belief of an individual that his/her thoughts are of the highest importance. After all, one's thoughts are private and others do not know about them; this is represented in the sentence by the metaphorical passer-by's lack of knowledge about Septimus's thoughts. In addition, the paradox at the end of the sentence adds to the motif of multiplicity present throughout Mrs. Dalloway; Septimus is simultaneously ecstatic and depressed due to his experiences and his ideas. In the same way, humans have several different emotions swirling under their surface--they are not one dimensional organisms, but instead complex and convoluted beings that experience multiple feelings at once. The syntax throughout this sentence also adds to this motif of multiplicity: there are 9 commas in this one sentence, separating the sentence into 10 sections that are independent but still linked as one sentence. In a similar manner, the emotions and thoughts one has and experiences can be disjoint of each other, but they are still connected because they all belong to one person.
This one sentence characterizes Woolf's views on the importance of the individual perfectly. The hyperbole she uses ("greatest message in the world") shows how important this idea is to Septimus; he believes that he has truly figured out the meaning of life and wants to share it with the world. This desire to share symbolizes the belief of an individual that his/her thoughts are of the highest importance. After all, one's thoughts are private and others do not know about them; this is represented in the sentence by the metaphorical passer-by's lack of knowledge about Septimus's thoughts. In addition, the paradox at the end of the sentence adds to the motif of multiplicity present throughout Mrs. Dalloway; Septimus is simultaneously ecstatic and depressed due to his experiences and his ideas. In the same way, humans have several different emotions swirling under their surface--they are not one dimensional organisms, but instead complex and convoluted beings that experience multiple feelings at once. The syntax throughout this sentence also adds to this motif of multiplicity: there are 9 commas in this one sentence, separating the sentence into 10 sections that are independent but still linked as one sentence. In a similar manner, the emotions and thoughts one has and experiences can be disjoint of each other, but they are still connected because they all belong to one person.
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