He was not afraid.
I reread this line from Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" several times in my head the first time I saw it. It is so glamorously (or morbidly) epic. It summed up so perfectly the emotions Septimus was feeling. This is the only point in the book where I felt like I understood what a character was thinking. Why is it that the most tragic characters are the most memorable? I believe it is because they are the most relatable. Everyone has a story. Everyone has something in them that is dark and secret that molds us more than most happier times. The key word here is "secret." People don't usually show their dark side right off the bat. It generally manifests itself into various mediums. Virginia Woolf, for example, turned to writing. With or without these mediums, people tend to repress these feelings. Septimus is a prime example of this. The loss and pain he has suffered gets pushed down deep inside of him until he becomes numb and can no longer feel it. What he once considered a manly quality ultimately destroys him. His dark side manifested itself in fear, until he couldn't handle it anymore.
I realize that this is extremely... depressing. But like I said originally, these tragic characters are the most remembered because they are, though slightly romanticized, relatable. Because these secret dark sides are (keyword) secret, we feel alone. We often think that we are the only ones with problems. It is in these low moments that we look for a way out - an escape. The line above jumped out at me because I have been there. We have all been there. Virginia Woolf captures the dark corners of humanity in this poetic line and reminds us that...
Everyone has a story, and we forget that.
