Elements of Woolf's Journey

Woolf definitely leads the reader and herself through the experience of perusing London all for the sake of a lead pencil. Like James Joyce's Ulysses, Woolf both literally and figuratively trails off weaving together her thoughts and what she has seen in a train of thought fashion. The journey is not only a walking journey but a thinking journey. As Woolf walks she takes note of things like the dwarf, the butcher's window and the boy leading the two blind men. The journey is described with an ardent curiosity, which is both mysterious and complex as Woolf continues to delve deeper than the scope of the eye. Woolf emphasizes the experienced life not a life propped by the objects one acquires. The journey is described not with color but rhythmn and sound, it also speculates on emotions and deals with the the stages of the journey by creating scenarios and episodes. The emotions she feels also seems to help her write as she describes the desolation that causes her to linger on. Woolf approaches everything with a matter of fact neutrality, she maintains a contrast in her writing between light and dark, the seen and the unseen. What defines the piece is the opposition between the mental and material world.