The Mark on the Wall Essay Questions

What parallels does the narrator share with the flesh-and-blood author of this story?

Virginia Woolf lived in a house similar to the one described by the narrator. Like the narrator, she spent countless hours battling a writer's block, which would lead to lapses in concentration, such as the particular lapse that would enable her to notice and contemplate the mark. Also, the second character who makes a brief appearance at the end is believed to be the husband of the narrator; Woolf lived with her husband Leonard, a publisher who was preoccupied with the news and whose everyday routine included going to buy a newspaper from the corner store. The way in which the narrator's mind leaps from one subject to another is also reminiscent of Woolf. Throughout her life, Woolf suffered from depression and was given to moments of deep melancholy. The types of things that the woman is thinking about sound very much like things that Woolf herself would be thinking about.

Most of the woman's trains of thought seem to lead her to thoughts about death. Why might this be?

The woman may be depressed, so most of her thought processes lead her to think about the one thing she is preoccupied with: death. However, there are other manifestations of this in her thoughts. The mark on the wall leads her to consider that it was caused by a painting that the previous owner of the house had hung there. She then thinks about how many belongings a person goes through in their lifetime, leading her to think about how many precious things get lost. This sense of loss is not only about the item itself, but also about the loss of the memories associated with each thing. It also makes her ponder her own insignificance in the world, which again leads her to melancholy and thoughts about death.

What is the role of the second character in the broader context of the narrative?

On the face of it, the second character—thought to be the woman's husband—is largely irrelevant to the plot. He does not seem to affect the woman one way or another, and is seemingly lost in his own little world of ranting and raving about politics. He is passing through her reverie on his way to buy a paper. However, he is actually very important: he observes that the mark on the wall is not a mark at all, but rather a snail. This suggests that something can be one thing to one person and another thing entirely to a second person. This reinforces the philosophical air to the writings—the air that was introduced when the woman began to consider her place in the world and the insignificance of humans in general. He represents the "masculine view of things" in his loudness, assertiveness, explosion into action and desire for indisputable knowledge.

Is the reader meant to believe the second character at the end of the story when he identifies the mark as a snail? Why or why not?

Multiple aspects of the story suggest that, even if there is an objective truth of what the mark is, the reader will never be in a position to access that truth. For one thing, the focus of the narrative—i.e. the narrator's philosophical stream of conscious—suggests that what the mark "is" with regard to this narrative is less a matter of its physical attributes and more a matter of existential connections and ruminations it can stimulate in the narrator's mind. Her husband's statement that the mark is a snail has little bearing on this question of the mark's ontological status. Further, the perspective through which we experience the story implies that, like any single person in the world, our knowledge is restricted to a single set of thoughts, beliefs, and desires: the irony of puzzling over what the mark "really" is is that we have no third-person, omniscient narrator to ever reveal that truth to us. This, in part, may be why the narrator never bothers getting up: she is limited to her own mind, and getting a closer look at the mark will not enable her to get any sort of "closer look" on her mind.