Absurdity Nihilism Death

Virginia Woolf has experienced two world wars, her life was full of tragedies and pains, her mental state collapsed again and again, so she was particularly concerned about the world and the relationship between people and society. She has shaped many new characters to reveal the sense of alienation and doom in the 20th century in Western world. This paper conducts a comprehensive study on Virginia Woolf's major works, including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Mark on the Wall, The waves; In addition, there are inspections on Virginia Woolf's life, including her family relationship, social contacts, mental illness, Hogarth Press and Bloomsbury Group. Finally the paper finds that Virginia Woolf and her works have a lot of existential characters.Existentialism does not concern about the abstract sense, the concept and the nature of traditional philosophy, but rather focuses on being and life. It always shows the deep concern about state of human existence which does not refer to the physical living state but the spiritual existence. It considers the people's psychological senses (often anxiety, despair, fear and other low, morbid psychological senses) as the only true existence to expose the absurdity of the world and the loneliness of the people and shows people's spirit freedom and free choice in the absurd situation and desperate performance. Existentialists consider that the world is absurd. Living on such an absurd world, people are lonely and isolated fundamentally, they do not understand each other. Everyone has a complete world which has no contact with other's. They only communicate on the surface and do not touch the heart; so that the relationship among people as well as the relationship between people and society is alienated gradually. At the same time, Existential Nihilism thinks that the world, the human existence particularly, has no sense, purpose and understandable truth and the most essential value. Life is nothing, living simply repeats day after day without any difference. Its boredom and emptiness make people feel anxious and upset, people are deeply pessimistic and despaired. Ultimately people choose to die to get rid of this predicament and wish to be reborn. Death is the most possibility in the world, no one can avoid. Death temporarily suspense on the head of each individual. Thus, each individual's existence can only be "being towards death."In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus was a very promising young man before the war, but after he experienced the bloody war and the death of his friend, he became "insane". Such an "insane" morbid psychology consciousness could not be understood by others. In a society with "proportion" as the measure, and in this "everyone is drunk and I am alone sober" world, he was not really insane, his "insane" just showed the world's absurdity and human's alienation. As housewives, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay thought that the only meaningful thing to do was to hold parties; six friends in The Waves lived almost the same life everyday. Day after day, year after year, life was boring and empty; they felt deeply anxious and painful about the boring life. At last, all of them felt desperate and chose to die. Shadow of death was hanging over all Virginia Woolf's works. Septimus jumped through the window and committed suicide when Mrs. Dalloway's party was at the climax, Mrs. Ramsay died suddenly, and her son and daughter did not escape the clutches of death either, and Virginia Woolf also jumped into the Ouse River. They tried to struggle against this absurd world and wake up all mortal beings by deaths, at the same time they got their own peace and rebirth through death.Through the above analysis we can see that Virginia Woolf's views and values about life coincided with the existentialists', that is:The world is absurd, and people are alienated; generally people have anxiety and angst about the boring life; then they are in pessimism and despair, and ultimately choose to die to get relief and rebirth.