als in Virginia Woolf's novel could be
explained by her own life in the British intelligentsia. However, intellectual endeavors are
essentially the same as other human endeavors in their risks and rewards. It may be that
Woolf was simply writing about those endeavors which she knew best, but intended her
points to be much more widely applicable. Woolf makes explicit comparisons to more
traditionally heroic kinds of accomplishment in describing Mr. Ramsay's struggle to
analyze his degree of intellectual success:
Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling sea with six
biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his
help...Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region
would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither
sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his
help again...Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has
begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself
down and die before morning comes, stole upon him... (34-35)
The hope of transcendence for people who endeavor in any field, whether it is art, science,
politics, business, war or exploration, lies in achieving recognition for their
accomplishments. If they do great work, they tell themselves, they will be remembered by
future generations and thus achieve a measure of immortality. But all endeavors are
inherently risky; one can never be sure how well one will succeed, or how much one's
Mr. Ramsay expresses his desire to transcend death through intellectual accomplishment
most clearly in his lengthy mental soliloquy on levels of achievement. He uses the analogy
of an alphabet, in which people advance from A toward Z as they achieve greater
...