Mrs. Dalloway Lesson Plan

1. How does the novel suggest that Septimus's idea of himself as a "chosen one" formed?

The book traces the development in Septimus of several seeds--vanity, loneliness, ambition, poetry, and others--that are transfigured by the trauma of the Great War into facets of his madness. Though Septimus's conclusions have led him far from where he started, Woolf suggests that the desire to see himself as set apart from others has been present since his adolescence.Then, it manifested as an interest in literature and philosophy, but Evans' death has warped Septimus, and that sense of uniqueness has become a belief that the world has something to tell him; something to say...