In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf focuses in detail on how darkness and light work on the relationships between her characters. The presence of light or darkness tends to govern certain scenes: light brings people together in harmony based on the physical environment, while darkness instead symbolizes isolated inner consciousness. Twilight, of course, represents a balance between the two extremes: the characters seem both distant from each other in their mental spaces and connected in the environment they share, transcending the modern problem of isolation and also retaining their individuality. At a twilight moment, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay represent an ideal of marriage: the balance between light and dark makes their characters symbols of something more than their isolated selves, but also allows them to maintain their individual strength. At twilight, Woolf recognizes the possibility of a balance between the inner and the outer that offers a counterbalance to the modernist problem of the solipsistic and entirely isolated person. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayWoolf bases unity on the ability of light to emphasize physicality, and it is through he physical environment that the characters realize their connections, unifying their consciousnesses through the "real" space they all share (rather than through their disparate mental spaces). At Mrs. Ramsay's dinner party, the lighting of the candles brings the group together in the falling darkness, illuminating the physical features of the room and its inhabitants. The light of the candles made the entire long table appear with them, and in the middle a dish of yellow and purple fruits... Thus suddenly raised in the light, it seemed to possess great size and great depth... and to [Mrs. To Ramsay's pleasure (because it made them momentarily friendly) she saw that Auguste was also feasting his eyes on the same plate of fruit, diving into it, breaking a flower... looking together united them. (96-97)Light thus produces visibility of objects and people, whose physicality in turn facilitates the connection between the characters. Here, Mrs. Ramsay and Augustus focus on the fruit dish, and its accentuated physicality attracts them both, rather than simply its light. Ms. Ramsay focuses on the “large size and depth” of the dish, which arises directly from the play of light on it. Augustus “feasts” on the fruit and interacts with it in a physical way (albeit in mental space) by diving into and breaking a flower. They connect to each other through their connections with the enlightened physical fruit – the illuminated outer world thus ensures harmony between two inner consciousnesses. Darkness, conversely, represents the isolation at the heart of the human being and the fundamental inaccessibility of one's inner space, even in the form of one's own thoughts. Unlike light, darkness does not manifest by making physical things visible, but obscures all sense of the body, reducing people to their ineffable centers. Mrs. Ramsay's rare moment of separation from her family illustrates this point, as she reflects: “Right now she doesn't need to think about anyone. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what she often now felt the need to think about; well, not even to think. To be silent; be alone. All being and doing, expansive, scintillating, vocal, has evaporated; and one was reduced, with a feeling of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to the.