Word: patterning
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...reader has finished the book he realizes that The Years is well named. It is not so much the story of a particular family as it is the story of how time passes-or seems to pass; recurs-or seems to recur. In Virginia Woolf's plotless pattern there seems to be an inkling, a suggestion, a flash, of what time may mean. The effectiveness of her method, which she has been evolving for 15 years, is that it gives the reader this feeling of being abroad in space and time. The sense of time elapsing which the discontinuous...
Into the mind of aged Eleanor, who thinks deeper thoughts than her old, busy, muddled brain can speak, Virginia Woolf puts her final suggestion: "Is there a pattern?'' she asks. "A theme, recurring, like music; half remembered, half foreseen? ... a gigantic pattern, momentarily perceptible?" Nobody answers the question; but the sun. which presumably knows its part in the gigantic pattern, rises...
...ideas runs through her books, appears in their very titles: Time, Space, the Sea. Since all three are undefinable in novelists' terms, they have to be suggested semi-poetically, which is what Virginia Woolf does. Time, Space, the Sea are symbols, recurrent aspects of a dimly, intermittently perceived pattern...
Allen was a young rebel. He wanted to shatter conservative midwestern Jordanstown to bits, fit the pieces to a humaner pattern. So did his pal Dave. When Allen scraped together enough money to buy the local paper he proceeded to set the town on its ear. Subscriptions fell off but needy friends rallied to Allen's cause. Jordanstown's bosses dropped Allen a hint to mind his manners, but he went right ahead. Climax of his crusade was a parade of the underdogs, led by Dave and Allen, to the new meeting house built by painful comradely effort...
...however, redeems the play, and demonstrates that the author can create, at least within narrow limits. This is a jovial Irish lawyer named O'Neill, who admits that he has plenty of brains but no character, and is therefore no good. He is altogether of the Sidney Carton pattern, except that at the last minute he is cheated of his opportunity to die heroically. He it is who in the dark hours establishes chains of brotherly love. His usual style is to hold forth in eloquence and mock piety, to the amusement of himself and his listeners...