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The Importance of Septimus Warren Smith

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway , although the main character of the novel is Clarissa Dalloway, we find the spotlight constantly switching to other characters as well. Most of these other characters either have some sort of relationship with Clarissa or are one-off randos that we don’t hear from again. However, the one exception to this is Septimus (and Lucrezia, but I’m focusing on Septimus so that’s less important); he doesn’t have any obvious connection with Clarissa for the entirety of the novel, and yet the spotlight is repeatedly shone on him. In this post, I would like to talk about how, although Clarissa and Septimus live in different worlds, their similar experiences make Septimus an important character in the novel. On the surface, Clarissa and Septimus are nothing alike. Clarissa, on the one hand, is an upper-class figure and prepares to host a party. She holds a respected position in society and is socially connected to people through her government-worker husband an...
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Awko🌮

Howie, our narrator from The Mezzanine, is a very interesting character with many deep intellectual thoughts. While reading this novel, I personally had multiple instances where I couldn’t relate to Howie, either because he was talking about something that I had never thought about (for example, the greatness of the Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner), or because I just thought he was straight-up absurd. The idea of imagining myself urinating on someone’s face to help relax while doing my business had never crossed my mind until he talked about it. Even so, I think Howie can still be a very relatable character. One aspect of Howie that I could relate to was his awkward interactions with other people, as Baker exaggerates these small moments of uncertainty and overthinking that can occur in our everyday lives. One of the most relatable awkward moments Howie shares is his experience passing Bob Leary on the escalator. He describes the different things he does during their few seconds...
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20th century posts above👆

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The Power of Superstitions

What are your personal superstitions? The Power of Superstitions      Even though I believed in things such as ghosts and aliens when I was younger, I never really believed in the “traditional” superstitions. That’s why I never understood in elementary school when everyone made a big fuss over someone opening an umbrella indoors. I mean, it’s just an umbrella. The one superstition I did believe in was that four-leaf clovers were good luck, and I often spent hours at parks looking through the patch of normal clovers, picking them up, thinking they were four-leafed, just to realize that the leaves were just overlapped with each other. But this belief was also crushed when I learned that four-leaf clovers were just genetic mutations usually caused by people stepping on them, and that some guy found a sixty-three-leaf clover in his backyard. For a while, I was superstition-free.      I can’t recall when I started developing them, but at some point, I began su...
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Time Manager 3000

What kind of robot would you like?      Back in middle school, I could play games after school and still get everything done by my 8:30 pm bedtime. Now it seems nearly impossible to go to bed that early. Although I believe that part of the reason for this is that my homework is more difficult and time-consuming, it’s also because my time-management skills are not the best. Some nights, I feel lost on my journey to bed, with procrastination lurking around the corner and surprise attacks from sleepiness slowing me down. On those nights, I wish for a time management robot to help guide my journey.      A time management robot would have two main functions: it would help me plan my evening to achieve the earliest possible bedtime, and ensure I work efficiently at all times. It would be like my Google Maps for working; it would give me an ideal route and adjust depending on how my trip is going. Before I begin my homework, I like to think about the order I sho...
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Something little for every day

Although I’ve heard a variety of wise words from different people throughout my life, I believe that the Japanese phrase, “一日一善 [ichi nichi ichi zen]”, which translates to “one day, one good,” has stuck with me and affected my life the most. This is a phrase my parents have always told me since I was little, and it means people should strive to do at least one good thing every day. Every day, I would aim to do a good deed, whether it was opening the door for someone, complimenting people, picking up litter, or anything else to help someone out. As I grew older, this phrase became something that I think about every day, which has made it a natural habit for me to do good deeds for others. In fact, I have come to enjoy these kinds of actions because of the feeling of being appreciated by others. Back in seventh grade, one of my new classmates was having issues with their computer, which I had similarly had in the past. After class, I went up to them and helped solve their issue, and afte...
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One letter

What’s the most memorable thing you ever got in the mail? When I was in second grade, my family had moved to Champaign, and I had begun a new chapter in my life. Soon enough, I would face a big challenge: going to a new school. One of the things that helped me overcome this challenge was a piece of mail sent to me from the other side of the world. The summer before we moved, my family went back to Japan to visit my grandparents. During that time, I attended a Japanese school for two weeks to learn and have a different experience from school in America. I was scared. I was worried about not making any friends and spending the two weeks without having much fun. On the first day, I walked into the classroom to meet nineteen other classmates who were eager to meet me. Everyone would come talk to me at any chance they got, hitting me with question after question. After coming home from school, my parents asked me how my day was, to which I responded, “Not bad.” I wasn’t lonely, but I didn’...
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