The book Mrs. Dalloway makes us contemplate about death, a theme which most people view as negative. The book also views death as negative from the constant allusions to the battlefield in World War I with flaming bodies and mustard gas; to Rezia's anxious denial that her husband, Septimus, is actually suicidal. In addition, all characters in the book almost never think about or talk about the future. Everything is about the past and how things are now in the present. The characters seem afraid to think about the future and thus present the likelihood that they are also suicidal in a way. Peter comes back to see Clarissa even though he knows that it will cause pain and imbalance in his seemingly happy life. His life is ironic, though, being a missionary in India he makes the wife of an Indian major commit adultery; after that he comes back to London only to regain his repressed feelings for Clarissa. All of this happens while he tries to find a lawyer to divorce his Indian lover. Clarissa also seems to be suicidal or at least self harming since she was obviously in love with Peter when he proposed to her but she rejected him in order to marry Richard. Now she grieves about how people only judge her by her face value of being Richards wife. All main characters in this book have severe problems in their lives that originate from arrogant decisions in their past or from incidents that caused trauma to them.
Death may seem like a solution but that is up to each person to decide for themselves. The idea of death is different in everyone's mind.
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