3.  What is communion? How does the Dinner Party represent a sort of communion?  How does the unity achieved in Ch. 17 disintegrate and why? (See beginning of Chapter 18)  “The Window” – what is Mrs. Ramsay’s role? What do you think would happen if she were not there?

4.  What do you make of the skull and where it appears in the chapter?

5.  In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with still life painting in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods.  The Latin word means “vanity“ and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.  Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death

6.  And what do you make of Mrs. Ramsay’s green shawl covering the skull?  What could the green shawl be a symbol of?

7.  What is this chapter about? Choose one word.  Poetry  Allusions  How does this chapter help define the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay?  Final thought or feeling we are left with at the end of this section…  “The Window”: what is it a window into? Why do you think Woolf begins the novel with this intensely in-depth journey into the minds of these characters?  Story Question: Answered?