Shadows+and+Dust

In the movie "Gladiator" Proximo says to Maximus "We mortals are but shadows and dust." I find it hard to believe that Gladiator and Jacobs Room have anything in common but it seems to me that this is a common theme between the two. Woolf gives us this impression that most of the people that pass through out life will go by unnoticed like shadows just flashing across out life. For most people around us we amount to little more that shadows and dust. We masters of our own universe, and they masters of theirs, but there we cannot see the world the way that they do. I think that this is one of the most interesting things about Viginia Woolf's style, her ability to show how our perspective is, and how unimportant some people are in our lives, and how unimortant we are to theirs. "Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title" (page 62). Besides our closest friends and family people only get a glimpse of our lives, they only get to read the title. I just thought this was a really interesting subject, and wanted to know what other people might think about it. 1201924117

Let me begin by saying that Gladiator was a great movie and that anything written by Virginia Woolf pales by comparison. Virginia Woolf does bring up an interesting point in her book. There were plenty of characters that were brought into the book and only a select few ever had any real impact. At times I felt as if I was being bombarded by new and pointless characters for no real reason. I thought that Virginia Woolf was just adding fluff and making the book longer and the read ever more difficult. I honestly did not think of how moments like those fit her purpose so well until a few minutes ago. I think if this was brought up in our class discussions before we got really far in the book or I had at least thought of the theme that jko brought up I might have been more receptive to reading the book and less likely to do all the complaining that I did. Even though I think that Woolf was right in the fact that there are so many people that we meet that have an unimportant role in our lives and so many people that we meet that we have no impact I must say that there is a limit to how far that thought goes. At some point one has to believe that some seemingly unimportant person will perform some seemingly unimportant task/act that will make a huge difference somewhere down the road. I like the theme you picked up on jko but there is a limit to it. 1201925527

I actually find this idea of "shadows and dust" to be appealing because it actually really does fit with the theme of Jacob's Room when you think about it. I think that part of what Woolf was getting at with this novel was the idea that all the little people we pass briefly through life can and do effect us, but we never recognize them; we only recognize and truly know our close friends and family. Still, we do not have even a full grasp on those closest to us and I believe we can only truly fully understand ourselves and not others. I think Woolf was getting at this idea that we too often only see what is projected on the surface by others and do not see all of who they are; too often we are simply shut out from the inside. I do think Woolf was accurately portraying life by having all these seemingly random characters pop up because even if a character only appeared for two lines and said a few words, his/her contribution was still somehow important in the context of Jacob's life and the novel. Woolf was getting at this idea that nothing is truly unimportant and that everyone in our lives has relevant thoughts, but we cannot see them. In the novel, we only see everyone's thoughts because the narrator jumps into the mind of every character, but no such thing happens in real life.1201930537

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