Chaos+vs.+Cosmos

Chaos is an important element of //Jacob's Room//. The relationship between chaos (disorder) vs. cosmos (order) is worth taking a deeper look at. "In short, the observer is choked with observations. Only to prevent us from being submerged by **chaos**, nature and society between them have arranged a system of classification which is simplicity itself; stalls, boxes, amphitheatre, gallery" (52). What role does this relationship play in the Woolf's novel? Woolf creates a great deal of chaos merely with her style of writing. Is she hinting by this that chaos wins? But from the previous quote, it is obvious that chaos is something that should be avoided. Chaos is separated from nature in society in this passage. Yet I think chaos prevails in this novel, or book, or whatever it is. Any other thoughts?1201825439

Chaos is a prevalent theme in Jacob's Room. Woolf's style of writing the impressions of the protagonist made on other characters rather than solely focusing on him makes the book a jumble of different thoughts and characters with perspectives often jumping to new vantage points mid-sentence. Woolf said that in her book that order is preferable; however, through her writing, she showed that life in general is filled with disorder. No one can catagorize and order the thoughts of all the people on Earth at the same time: it is impossible. Even trying to document the thoughts relative to one person from some people for a short time proves to be chaotic in Woolf's book. Woolf may believe that nature intended for order, but with the rising of human intelligence and self-awareness this goal of order is proving to be harder and harder to reach. 1201937812

I never really gave much thought to this concept in refernece to the book, but now that you mention it, I think it is something worth looking at. When I read the quote posted previously, I did not really think of her writing style. I suppose that does create a sort of chaos for us as readers, but I dont think that that is what is really being referenced. In the book, we focus on certain characters, usually one at a time. While we are focusing on one character, sometimes thoughts and ideas from other characters are inserted. We could equate the characters to the stalls, and the other issues around them to the bigger concepts. I think one reason Woolf wrote in this manner is to help us avoid some of the chaos and not get lost in other details/characters in the book that do not add to her point at that specific time. I dont know if I can agree with the idea that chaos wins and i dont agree that it should be avoided completely. I think that sometimes, when it is sorted through and looked at carefully, the chaos in the book can lead to a greater understanding of the characters and ideas.1201833190

I have to think that chaod can in no possible way, shape, or form be avoided. We can obviously see this throughout Jacob's Room. This was one item in the book that both annoyed me yet intrigued me at the same time. Woolf spent the whole book adding in characters and bouncing back and forth from one thought to the other because that's how life and our world usually are. Everything bounces back and forth. It is never really consistent. New people are always introduced.When Woolf says that we are choked with observations, I think that she is just making a kind of "joke." She is kind of saying, "Look at my book!! You are being choked with observations!! But that's how life is. We can't escape it."Woolf just wants her readers to know that she understands her style and how she writes. She know what life is like and is trying to portray that concept through her book.1201833826

I really like this topic. It's funny, because just today I was questioning why I feel like everything must be in order, even though in the back of my mind I know it never will be. Everyone wants his or her stuff to be aligned in a neat and tidy row, when this desire only makes him or her more unhappy. Is there any way that we as people will ever be able to embrace the chaos? Because we desire perfection, does that mean we desire cosmos? That does seem like the perfect word to use to define order, because the cosmos is a whole. Isn't another connotation of the word cosmos galaxy? Actually, when I think of cosmos I often get a picture of perfect eternity with God, a picture of heaven. If cosmos is harmonious perfection, isn't that God? Then, It is understood that as humans we can not be with God until we die; therfore, we will never have cosmos in this world. But, we will go on desiring perfection, cosmos, because it is instinctual to long to be perfect, to be in harmonious order with God. Woolf writes her novel in chaos because she knows that is what the human spirit is all about. I think that Woolf realizes perfect cosmos can not be achieved until we are reunited with God in heaven. She embraces our humanity, are chaos. 1201834732

It is funny that you should bring up the whole topic of chaos vs. cosmos. On the purely scientific front, it has been generally acknowledged that the universe is gradually transforming into chaos or entropy, simply because no reaction is 100% efficient. Eventually the universe will be nothing but heat. Maybe Viriginia Woolf had heard about this theory and is including it in her writing or had just realized that chaos is the world's natural order. Walking through the forest, observing the celestial night, one quickly realizes that the 'proper' order we try to create in our lives has no real reflection in the outside world. It, in fact, may actually serve to distance us from it. In this way, I guess my opinion differs from Woolf's in that I do not find that chaos is separate from nature or even that much from society. For all humanity's striving towards order, we hardly have achieved it. Virginia Woolf may not be implying in fact that chaos is to be avoided, since her writing style clearly employs a type of chaos. Her writing reflects the disjointed thought processes of man, the chaotic thoughts of man. 1201840321

If cosmos is perfection and order, I think we are each reasons for its impossibility here on earth. Nobody is perfect, we know this. Life is chaotic, but it contains varying ranges for such. For some, life is complete chaos and they have no inclination of what they want or where they are headed. There is less with those who have goals, plans, and a means to achieve and fulfill them. Yet there is always going to be some form of chaos surrounding us because there are so many aspects to our lives that we have absolutely no control over. This can be severely frustrating, and we have the urge to get a handle on things. We feel more at ease when matters are laid out and when our lives are carried out as expected. This, of course, does not always happen. Life is chaotic, so it is therefore unexpected - almost always. So does this mean we should embrace chaos? I don't know. But I am pretty certain that we won't. We crave order, because it puts our minds at ease...I am not sure that we could ever reach a calm if completely consumed by chaos. 1201844047

Interesting interpretations. I don't think Woolf is trying to say that we should embrace chaos, but instead its existence should be acknowledged. Society attempts to cover chaos through the use of simplicity as Woolf described in the quote. Generally, people try to make things simple so chaos does not occur. However, through her writing, Woolf is showing that chaos is unavoidable. For example, Woolf's writing is so confusing because she writes as if she is experiencing first hand a particular situation and because of this must include every detail. When readers encounter these details, they are often confused, but this was her purpose. By doing this, she shows that life is chaotic. 1201883446

Woolf and her group of people were counter cultural and were prone to impulses that many people of that time period would consider "chaoitc" and outside the order of the current culture. In writing this book Woolf is on one level responding that your world is as chaotic as my world so why do you try to simplify things when you can't. Remember throughout this book Jacob shows much adversion and even dispises the contempary culture of his class and standing so this book in showing the faultlines of the society and inherent chaos that every form of life has to reflect that mood. Also the chaos in the book can have another meaning in which it is showing how the so called "orderly" society gave birth to a comflict that ended up killing Jacob along with countless other men. user:DGr-c

Life is chaos plain and simple. What we do as people is this dividing up of things into stalls and spaces as Woolf mentions on the page 52 passage mentioned in the opening post of this thread. I think as a way to keep ourselves sane, we as people classify and categorize things whether it be consciously or subconsciously because humans at the root want order. We want to file all the elements of our lives in a way that we can easily wrap our heads around; nevertheless, the problem is that our perceptions and perspectives get in the way when we are organizing things and often we might misconstrue something to make it mean something else. A simple "hello" can mean a million things to a million different people depending on how they take it and that is chaos. Face it, life is this chaotic thing where none of us truly know what's going to happen. I mean, I could finish this post and just drop dead(ok that's a bit of an illogical exaggeration, but you get the point).

As a society, we always classify things into these little spaces. People are placed in their class and they cannot really move from that class; it is their place in life. Truthfully though, no one belongs in a class because a class isn't even a real thing, but rather an intangible limit set on people by other people. People by nature are not born into a class system per se because technically we are all the same and equal at birth; we are chaotic. Humans are chaotic beings who can do anything at any time, but society takes from this chaos and puts an order to things which can often lead to restraint. I think Woolf honestly wanted to embrace this idea of chaos because chaose equals constraint and restraint and Woolf was a counter culture person as DGr mentioned in the above post. Face it, we will never put everything in "order" no matter how hard we try so we should just accept the chaos that is life.1201905638

Chaos, and order go hand in hand, the world has a complete balance of both. Even in the seeming chaos of the natural world there are patterns. Geese fly south for the winter every year, at the same time of year, in the same formation. Moss only grows on the north side of a tree. The weather is chaotic, but it still follows weather patterns. The world is has a constant balance of Chaos and order. Woolf is showing that in her book. There is never too much chaos, and there is never too much order. Her writing style seems exceedingly chaotic, but that is only because most other authors have a writing style that is very orderly, and true to the amount of chaos we see in everyday life. "Jacob's Room" has order, otherwise it would not be able to function as a novel. It is somewhat predictable, with an occasional unexpected twist, just like life is...I could probably tell you that I'm going to finish this post and not drop dead. Life is chaotic, so I don't really know for sure that it is true, but there is enough order that I could predict it with a fair amount of certainty. 1201920657