Commentary of Virginia Woolf's Flying Over London
Life is a force that all are acquainted with, but the force of death is a force, about which we can only hypothesize. These two ideas are addressed throughout the essay using imagery and symbolism. Through the essay, there appear to be patterns, parts of the essay in which the narrator talks about only life and death, and there are parts in which the narrator alternates between the two. There is also frequent mention of birth and the process of dying. Finally, the progression of the essay in itself is a process of life, going from life to talking about death. In addition, various creatures and environments symbolize this cycle throughout the essay. Thus, many things on this planet undergo processes, and so too does this essay, from the beginning, of the birth and life, until the end, of dying and death. Throughout the essay, there seem to be periods of narration of only about life or death, and other times in which the narrator talks about both life and death in an alternating pattern. Through the beginning of the essay, there is an alternating cycle of life and death. The essay starts out by talking about the planes and that they look like grasshoppers, which roar into life. Then Woolf mentions flying in the plane, and from this view, it is as if the earth is falling, but stranger still is that the sky is falling. The narrator also mentions that vertebrae, ribs, entrails, and blood, all signs of life, belong to the earth, while clouds, which belong in the sky, vanish and melt away at the touch of each other, which are descriptive of death; like spirits, never permanent. The narrator also addresses the cycle of life, which is birth, death, and rebirth. For example, the fields in the following sentence undergo this life cycle: “and the fields that with us are meted into yards and grow punctually wheat and barley are made here and remade perpetually with flourishes of rain and flights of hail and spaces tranquil as the deep sea, and then all is chop and change, breeze and motion.” This tells of fields being born and reborn repeatedly with the help of rain and destroyed by hail, then, it is tranquil and quiet, when it is transitioning between life and death, then it becomes born again into a violent place, a place which is choppy and windy.