Фильо Ксения

The text under analysis is entitled " Solid Objects". It is a short story written by Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941). Virginia Woolf was a significant figure in the London literary society. She suffered immensely as a child from losing both her father and mother at an early age, which led to the beginning of her several nervous breakdowns and subsequent recurring depression. Despite her tumultuous childhood, she is one of the most extraordinary and influential female writers in history of literature. Her unique style of writing, incorporations of symbolism and use of similes and metaphors in her works makes her distinctive from other writers. One of these works is “Solid Objects”.

To start the lexical-semantic analysis, I would like to focus on the title of the story. The phrase “Solid Objects” itself creates hyper-semantization. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary (2016, p. 128) “Solid” means “firm and stable in shape; not liquid or fluid” and “Object” is “a material thing that can be seen and touched” (p. 88). We can already see that the title of the story is an oxymoron and seems to be divided into two themes. Following from this, we can assume that the word “solid” would show us the semantic field of spiritual values and “object” would represent the seme of material values in the story. To check this idea, I suggest continuing the analysis with turning to the text.

From the beginning of the story we can notice that the sentences are as long as an entire paragraph and that the text abounds in all sorts of stylistic techniques. The author creates a visual image for a reader from the very first lines: Virginia Woolf shows us a dark spot from afar, “zooms” it slowly and then the dark spot turns out to be two young men. But at first, these people are described only as separate objects. At the end of the first paragraph, the narrator uses defeated expectancy, moving from extended sentences to short ones.

Later in the introduction we get to know our characters who are John and Charles walking along the beach. It’s interesting to note that the author is extremely attentive to details in the text and with the help of onomatopoeia and alliterated sounds [s] and [t] she creates the sound of footsteps on the sand in this sentence: “the walking st ick on the righ t -hand s ide nex t the waves s eemed t o be a ss er t ing a s i t cu t long st raigh tst ripes upon the s and”.

As for the characters’ names, from the source on the Internet (behindthename. com, 2017) we can learn that the name “John” is of Hebrew origin meaning “to be gracious” where “gracious” is “behaving in a pleasant, polite, calm way” (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2016, p. 75) and “Charles” is derived from a Germanic word meaning “free man” where “free” is “not limited or controlled” (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2016, p. 67). On this basis we can make an assumption that John would be the protagonist of the story and Charles would be the antagonist, and later in the text we can find a confirmation of this idea.

In the setting, borrowing his fingers into the sand, John finds “a full drop of solid matter” and brings it to the surface. We can notice the alliteration of the sound [w] that indicates his surprise when he sees his find: “ w hen the sand coating w as w iped off... ”, which appears to be a smooth lump of glass without edges. This treasure fully occupies his attention and fascinates him. The narrator shows it with the help of parallelism: “he held it to the light, he held it so” along with many other stylistic devices. John perceives this thing as something valuable, while Charles “skims pieces of shale over the water”, not giving them any importance. It is also worth to mention that these two men have a significant status, – because they are both members of Parliament and tied to politics, – but we see how their status differs from their behavior, when John digs a hole in the sand like a child, and Charles throws pieces of shale to the water. The author focuses on John’s worldview and creates the zooming effect, diving us from the external world to the protagonist’s inner world. But we reach the climax when John is distracted by his friend’s sigh where “sight” means “to breathe out noisily, expressing tiredness or sadness” (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2016, p. 145); Virginia Woolf presents this situation with litotes: “now a sigh disturbed him”. Charles does not pay attention to the find of his friend, but John “slips it inside his pocket” on the spur of the moment.

The main character becomes increasingly captivated by the abandoned things to such an extent that he decides to renounce a promising career in politics and to devote his entire life to searching for appealing fragments, which are introduced to us with the gradation in the text: “china, glass, amber, rock, marble”. With the alliteration of the sound [l] we can understand how much joy brings this activity to John and that it literally sheds a light on his life: “a l ump of g l ass had its p l ace upon the mante l piece”, “upon a l itt l e pi l e of bi ll s and l etters”. The narrator mentions that John looks for a reminder of that lump of glass that was found on the beach in each fragment, and even “the smooth oval egg of a prehistoric bird” may take its place in his collection. This thing is not accidental because the egg has always held particular symbolic significance. According to the source on the Internet (umich. edu, 2016) many cultures believe eggs to be “the source of a new life from inanimate matter”, and even that the world emerged from an egg. In this case, the egg means John’s spiritual rebirth.

In the denouement of the story Charles pays John a visit and “lifts the stone on a mantelpiece” which is served as an allusion to the Greek myth about Sisyphean labour meaning hard and endless work. The word “stone” here means “the hard, solid substance found in the ground that is often used for building, or a piece of this” (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2016, p. 158) and the mantelpiece is a literal sanctuary for John. A misunderstanding is shown between the former friends as they talk about different things and don’t understand each other anymore. Charles even expresses a slight aggression at the stylistic level with the alliterated [r]: “he looked r ound to find some r elief for his ho rr ible dep r ession” and only in comparison with him we can notice how much John deviated from the conventional way of life by choosing spiritual values over the material values.

In conclusion, it is worth to note that the author fills the text with double-meaning, leaving a stage for thinking. Returning to the title of the story, we can refer Charles to the seme “Object”, and John to the seme “Solid” and here Virginia Woolf pushes reader to think what is really important. On the one hand, John left a successful career for an odd activity and lost his friend, but on the other hand he found a real purpose despite the disapproval of the society.

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