“Some distance above her is the bright, rippled surface. The sky reflects unsteadily there, white and heavy with clouds, traversed by the black cutout shapes of rocks. Cars and trucks rumble over the bridge. A small boy, no older than three, crossing the bridge with his mother, stops at the rail, crouches, and pushes the stick he’s been carrying between the slats of the railing so it will fall into the water. His mother urges him along but he insists on staying awhile, watching the stick as the current takes it” (8).
Cunningham uses this simple moment to explore the idea that each person has his or her own individual life and is unaware of most other people’s lives. He suggests that life continues for those who are left behind after someone dies. Cunningham uses a small boy here to symbolize innocence. The young boy juxtaposed with the terrible suicide aggrandizes the theme. Cunningham uses this interaction between a mother and a son very early on in the book to introduce the theme of family relations, particularly those involving a child and a parent. Woolf lacked a close relationship with her parents since her mother died when she was only thirteen. When she was twenty-two, her father died. Similarly, Richard did not have a close relationship with his mother. In both cases, these weak relationships led to the child’s suicide. In this way, this scene is quite ironic since the interaction occurs over Virginia’s dead body and her suicide was a result of her lacking that bond.
“Virginia Woolf.” Introduction to Comparative Literature. 2004. Colorado College. 3 Oct. 2010 <http://ats.coloradocollege.edu/co100-04-b1/author/page.php?autPage=3>.
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