Life Goes On: A Close Reading on an Excerpt of The Hours by: Michael Cunningham
The Hours was an amazingly well written novel set in three different decades of the twentieth century: the 1920’s, the 1950’s, and the 1980’s. The novel tells the story of three very different women with similar inner turmoil. The women, Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughn, undergo a mental and emotional identity crisis that makes each of them feel a loss of control of their own lives. The novel’s main theme is that life is an overwhelming reality, filled with hours that are dark and unbearable and in order to survive those hours, one must hold on tight to the hours that are happy, satisfying, delicious, or just bearable. If one does not accomplish this, one will feel isolated, alone, suffocated, and dead internally. This theme is portrayed effectively in the excerpt I have chosen to write about. The excerpt I chose was from the top of page 196 to the top of 200. The excerpt is the dialogue exchange between Clarissa and Richard before he commits suicide.
The tension is pronounced in the first paragraph of this section, particularly in the description of Richard. He is described as both “insane and exalted, both ancient and childish…like some scarecrow equestrian, a park statue by Giacometti.” (196) Opposition is clearly at work early in this passage. Richard appears to have gone crazy, yet he looks exalted, as if regal. He looks as if he is old yet acting in a childlike manner. In the same paragraph it goes on to speak on his appearance: his hair “plastered to his scalp in some places, jutting out a sharp, rakish angles in others” (196) and his leg is described as “blue-white” and “skeletal.” (196)There is also tension between the two characters, Clarissa and Richard. Richard feels high both literally and figuratively, and exhilarated, and Clarissa feels low, terrified, yet not hysterical.
The word choices in this section are fantastic. The description of Richard in his hallucinated state and ragged, infirm body, paints a colorful picture. However, the description of Clarissa gives an oppositional account. Instead of Clarissa being deranged and high, she is unusually calm, as if “removed from herself, from the room, as if witnessing something that’s already happened.” (197)This particular description of Clarissa is a recurring theme in the entire novel. All three women, at one moment or another, feel like they are removed from their reality. They feel as if they are just going through life without any control, like being swept away by a current.
Richard also feels like he has lost control of his life. He feels that he is going through the motions of life. The AIDS that is killing him is making him endure what he calls “the hours.” After he tells Clarissa that he does not think he can make it to the party and Clarissa tells him he does not have to go or do anything at all, he responds by saying:
“But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.” (198)
For Richard, life has become excruciating, especially physically and emotionally.
The text does a wonderful job detailing Richard’s physical pain and anguish. However, on page 199, his emotional and mental anxiety is illuminated. He speaks of failing, another recurring theme in the novel. All three characters feel that they have failed at their life’s calling. When Clarissa tries to assure him that he has not failed, he does not endorse it. He reveals in the last paragraph on page 199 the following inner turmoil:
“
What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted to create something alive and shocking enough that it could stand beside a morning in somebody’s life…What foolishness.” (199)
After a few more sentences of dialogue, Richard tells Clarissa he loves her then he makes that fateful jump out of the window.
This excerpt from The Hours undoubtedly supports the themes that resonate so profoundly in the entire novel. Life, although unbearable and painful at times, goes on even after we die. The fact is, life does not stop for anyone else or for anything else, just for the person who has died. The feeling of failure and loss of control can be so overwhelming at times, that for some, it is easier or less painful to end one’s own life then to live their life on someone else’s terms. The Hours really conveys the message that one should embrace life and all its loveliness and all its darkness and appreciate the oppositional contradiction that is life. The hours can be a constant reminder of the inevitable end or a warm reminder of new memories that await us in this life.
Works Cited:
Cunningham, Michael The Hours New York: Picador, 1998
