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Persuasion and transcendence in to the lighthouse.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This article is for instructors who wish to use rhetorical theory in the literature classroom. It provides a rhetorical analysis of a dinner scene in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The dinner scene is subjected to two forms of Kenneth Burke's analysis: 1) the dramatic pentad or dramatism, and 2) consubstantiality, or identification. The theory of rhetorical consubstantiality and the dramatistic terms act, agent, scene, agency,and purpose coordinate well with the critical approach of deconstruction, which can apply to any form of symbolic language.

Introduction

As Eudora Welty notes in the foreword of To the Lighthouse, subjectivity is the key to this novel. Each character moves alone through his or her feelings without connecting emotionally to the other characters. This division, or lack of consubstantiality, motivates Mrs. Ramsay to create an "argument," through which she attempts to "persuade" her friends and family to be consubstantial with one another by way of carefully staged social events. The dramatic pentad connects rhetorical insight with one of the themes of To the Lighthouse: how the character of Mrs. Ramsay manipulates reality, creating dramatic occasions by which to persuade her loved ones to merge emotionally and achieve transcendence in the form of domestic bliss.

Theoretical Review

Kenneth Burke spent his life establishing connections between rhetorical and critical theory. In his perspective, "useful" (rhetorical) communication and "artistic" (poetic) communication are far more alike than distinct. In A Grammar of Motives, he concluded that all language situations are symbolic of human action and thus interrelated.

Burke's Dramatic Pentad

The Dramatic Pentad involves five parts--agent, act, scene, agency, and purpose. The agent is the person or character who acts, the act is the action taken, the scene is the setting, the agency is the means by which the agent acts, and the purpose is the reason or motivation behind the act. In rhetoric, the Pentad is useful for understanding rhetorical motivations: why a speaker or writer communicated in the way he or she did, through what means, to what purpose. In literature, the Pentad can also be useful for understanding character motivation: how the character's language and behavior support a larger theme in the work.

Burke's Theory of Consubstantiality

A great part of rhetorical persuasion lies in the ability to achieve unity with an audience, to persuade the audience to identify with the speaker or writer. Kenneth Burke explains consubstantiality in his A Rhetoric of Motives as a joining of two people's interests or "substance":

is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he...

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