Read the passage and complete the sentences that follow.

Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf (excerpt)

Septimus Warren Smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too. The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?

Everything had come to a standstill. The throb of the motor engines sounded like a pulse irregularly drumming through an entire body. The sun became extraordinarily hot because the motor car had stopped outside Mulberry's shop window; old ladies on the tops of omnibuses spread their black parasols; here a green, here a red parasol opened with a little pop. Mrs. Dalloway, coming to the window with her arms full of sweet peas, looked out with her little pink face pursed in enquiry. Every one looked at the motor car. Septimus looked. Boys on bicycles sprang off. Traffic accumulated. And there the motor car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who am blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointed at; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose? But for what purpose?

This excerpt is an example of Woolf's use of 1.---- as an experimental narrative form. From a description of the scene, we are transported into the mind of the harrowed war soldier, Septimus. Words such as wavered, quivered, burst, and throb, give us a sense of his 2.---- . The description of the scene is reminiscent of the following line from a poem by William Butler Yeats: 3.---.

1. Stream of consciousness

2. a sense of his mind, which has been traumatized in the war; one might say Septimus has PTSD

3. The scene is reminiscent of "The Second Coming," by Yeats, especially the line: Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere...

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sarkhan2018 sarkhan2018 · Answer 2 · 2018-12-10T02:13:33+01:00

The correct answer is the stream of consciousness. The technique is used to describe the many feelings and thoughts character passing through his mind. We can observe it in the character of Septimus.
Wavered means moving unsteadily, quivered is synonymous with shiver or shake, burst is used when something happens suddenly and with force and throb is a shrilling voice according to the excerpt definitions. The nature of the words gives us a sense of intense, anxiety and fear.
There is a poem called "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats questioning the nature of humanity after the First World War. There are lines "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" is relevant with the description of the excerpt.