Are we going to the Lighthouse?

How are people transformed through their relationships with others?

People are negatively and positively impacted by the relationships they have with the people around them. In To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, James is negatively impacted by the relationship that he has with his father. James is always asking if they are going to the Lighthouse. He is wishing and hoping for something that is denied to him by his father. His father Mr. Ramsay always tells him that there will be no trip to the Lighthouse, seeming almost to get pleasure out of doing so. James resents his father and harbors a grudge against him, resulting in a negative energy between the two characters.

But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interruption them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism…but most of all he hated the twang and twitter of his father’s emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relation with his mother (pg 36-37).

His father also impacts James’ relationship with his mother and is very bitter about this. James looks to his mother for support and love that he doesn’t receive from his father. When his father is around James doesn’t get his mothers full attention.

As James grew older his bitterness towards his father consumed him and eventually he becomes like his father, moody and seeking praise from others. His relationship transformed him to become like the person he hated most.