Persuasion and transcendence in to the lighthouse

Academic Exchange Quarterly, Spring, 2005 by Amy A. Childers

Abstract

This article is for instructors who wish to use rhetorical theory in the literature classroom. It provides a rhetorical analysis of a dinner scene in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The dinner scene is subjected to two forms of Kenneth Burke's analysis: 1) the dramatic pentad or dramatism, and 2) consubstantiality, or identification. The theory of rhetorical consubstantiality and the dramatistic terms act, agent, scene, agency,and purpose coordinate well with the critical approach of deconstruction, which can apply to any form of symbolic language.

Introduction

As Eudora Welty notes in the foreword of To the Lighthouse, subjectivity is the key to this novel. Each character moves alone through his or her feelings without connecting emotionally to the other characters. This division, or lack of consubstantiality, motivates Mrs. Ramsay to create an "argument," through which she attempts to "persuade" her friends and family to be consubstantial with one another by way of carefully staged social events. The dramatic pentad connects rhetorical insight with one of the themes of To the Lighthouse: how the character of Mrs. Ramsay manipulates reality, creating dramatic occasions by which to persuade her loved ones to merge emotionally and achieve transcendence in the form of domestic bliss.

Theoretical Review

Kenneth Burke spent his life establishing connections between rhetorical and critical theory. In his perspective, "useful" (rhetorical) communication and "artistic" (poetic) communication are far more alike than distinct. In A Grammar of Motives, he concluded that all language situations are symbolic of human action and thus interrelated.

Burke's Dramatic Pentad

The Dramatic Pentad involves five parts--agent, act, scene, agency, and purpose. The agent is the person or character who acts, the act is the action taken, the scene is the setting, the agency is the means by which the agent acts, and the purpose is the reason or motivation behind the act. In rhetoric, the Pentad is useful for understanding rhetorical motivations: why a speaker or writer communicated in the way he or she did, through what means, to what purpose. In literature, the Pentad can also be useful for understanding character motivation: how the character's language and behavior support a larger theme in the work.

Burke's Theory of Consubstantiality

A great part of rhetorical persuasion lies in the ability to achieve unity with an audience, to persuade the audience to identify with the speaker or writer. Kenneth Burke explains consubstantiality in his A Rhetoric of Motives as a joining of two people's interests or "substance":

   is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their
   interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify
   himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he
   assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so (20).

But even in joining, the individual remains unique:

   Here are ambiguities of substance. In being identified with B, A is
   substantially one with a person other than himself. Yet at the same
   time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is
   both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and
   consubstantial with another. (20)

This perception allows, according to Burke, a common culture or society to develop in which "a way of life is an acting-together and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them consubstantial" (21). Such a view of language correlates well with literature, which uses imagination to reflect on the human condition, to increase empathy and to understand the ways in which human beings are interconnected.

Deconstruction and Division

Burke asserts, "to begin with identification is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division." That is, "identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division" (22). Division, or avoiding division, is the commodity in which rhetoric deals because "if men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity" (22). Such an awareness of merging and dividing is very familiar to the deconstructionist, for whom every symbolic action is both building towards an idea, and tearing down that idea simultaneously. The close reading of a single sentence can render "ambiguities of substance" that both confirm and deny the concepts it contains.

Teaching the Pentad and To the Lighthouse

To teach the Pentad in a literature classroom, the above theoretical discussion should be shared with the class. Explain how the five key terms of Dramatism--act, agent, scene, agency, and purpose--can provide insight into a character's motivation, and thus insight into a novel's theme. As an example, consider using the character of Mrs. Ramsay as the agent, and the dinner scene in Chapter XVII of the first book "The Window" to explore act, agency, scene and purpose. The agent or character is Mrs. Ramsay. Her act is throwing a dinner party for friends and family. The scene or setting is Mrs. Ramsay's dining room. The agency or means is the food and conversation. The purpose is to create domestic stability and transcend to happiness, which connects to the theme of the novel.