Refrains

"If it's fine tomorrow."

"Someone had blundered."

These are two of many lines that are repeated, sometimes exactly, sometimes in variation, throughout To the Lighthouse. What makes them work as refrains in the text as opposed to seeming likes hitches, glitches, passages we've already heard and don't need to again?

Both lines are central to a certain idea or action that resonates in multiple ways across the entire book. As for the first, whether they will go to the lighthouse depends on the weather, and the lighthouse itself represents the object of each character's dearest desire. The blundering reflects the fear of having made a terrible mistake somewhere along the way, a fear that haunts almost all of the characters, from Lily, who thinks her paining is infinitely bad, to Mrs Ramsay who wonders what she's made of her life, to Mr Ramsay, who wonders how he lost the path that would have taken him not just to Q but Z (or at least R) on the intellectual alphabetary.

Woolf's secret here is that she varies these refrains enough that each iteration is different, pushes the story forward a bit. We loop back to the same or similar language, but the implication is different when Lily hears Ramsay reciting Tennyson than when he himself does it, not knowing he's being observed, or when Mr. Bankes overhears him. Woolf has made these lines resonate across many characters and moments, such that they mean not just one thing but many, and the many meanings all amplify one another so that the essence — the hope of achieving a dream, the fear of being a failure — is vastly richer than any one expression of it might be.

PROMPT

Develop a refrain, a line that has slightly different meanings to several different characters or in several different scenes in your work. You can vary it a bit, but we should recognize it. Use it several times, extending throughout the text. If it's there at the beginning, make sure it comes back toward the end. Push the variations in meaning. Play with them. If you find you are already using a refrain, examine the variations and development. Does it accrue meanings across its various appearances? If not, push it till it does.