To the Lighthouse, tells the story of a family as they go through the war and lose people. The subject matter of loss is shown clearly through the novel, through the eyes of Lily. Woolf uses a fractured tone to demonstrate how broken the family is due to the missing people. The glue of the family is gone and all that is left is the shadows of the memories they left behind. These shadows haunt the current characters and make it almost impossible for the characters to move on with their lives. 

Woolf also uses the idea of the trip to the lighthouse to bring the family closer together. The family has been fractured due to its losses and is still reeling from them. The family is pulled in hundreds of different directions and is trying to find some common ground so they can go forward. The trip to the lighthouse is giving the family a chance to talk about what they want out of life and what direction they want to go in. This speaks to the War and its aftermath. People were so fractured and lost that they did not know which way to go and ended up alienating themselves, the opposite of what they wanted in the first place. What people needed was a chance to regroup after WWI and focus on healing the cracks in their society.