While reading To The Lighthouse, I had to stop and reread Chapter 3 a few times, as I was particularly struck by the way Woolf relies on sound or sound-based descriptors within that chapter. Sound is brought up in the very first sentence of the chapter, when Ms. Ramsay remarks "Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing" (15). Sound is described as "pressing" onto Ms. Ramsay, something encompassing her entire being, entirely unavoidable. The soundscape of the house is shown to be both calming, as the sound of the plumbers "had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her," but also terrifying, as the "monotonous fall of the waves on the beach" transitions from "a measured and soothing tattoo to [Ms. Ramsay's] thoughts" (15) to "a ghostly roll of drums remoreselessly beat[ing] the measure of life, [forcing] one to think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment into the sea" (16). Just as quickly, however, Ms. Ramsay is able to bring herself away from these thoughts by latching her focus onto the "regular, mechanical sound" (16) of her husband's voice as he walks back and forth on the terrace. If I had to link this to back to World War I (which I do because that's what the class is about) I'd probably say this scene could be a moment of PTSD, episodes of which can be triggered by the smallest thing, even a naturally occuring noise like the ocean. This could also be about the distance from nature brought on by the war. The ocean is entirely uncaring about the plights of humanity, and will keep beating against the coast until it destroys the land, regardless of what humans do. Here, nature is both a calming force and an agent of anxiety and terror, completely seperate from the actions of Ms. Ramsay and her family.