Imagery of School
Virginia Woolf presents imagery of the school setting to initially root the story and show how her characters naturally interact with one another. Because friendships between schoolmates are not a given and the long-lasting exposure to one another makes a friendship at school peculiar and less based on attributes, Woolf is able to present the anxieties of the characters which follow them throughout the rest of the novel. Imagery of the school setting further shows how Louis will interact with his friends, because the school is uniquely British and Louis has no familial exposure to the aesthetic of the academy.
Imagery of Waves
Woolf tracks the lifelong action of the novel through the rising and falling of a day. Her imagery prevents these sections from seeming perfunctory and the structure of the novel from being didactic about how the development of a human life lasts a long time but then ends swiftly. She provides colors and descriptions of the wind and sun to provide a reprieve from the characters' thoughts, which are designed to be insular.
Imagery of Dinner
A pivotal scene shows how the characters wait for one another to arrive at the planned group dinner. Now that they are older, they must focus on recognizing other members of the group; imagery helps Woolf show the early arrivals' preparation to stand up and welcome the characters while depicting the way the characters have changed physically since only a few chapters earlier when they first met as children. She ties their perceptions of themselves and one another into the mode of life each of them has chosen, and the extent to which she uses imagery helps emphasize Percival's absence on his travels.
Imagery of Neville's Desk
Neville's desk contains the record of his thoughts through his presence at it: he is not a capturer of moments in the way Bernard is, so he is deliberate in his choice to sit in his room and think. Imagery of his desk helps provide a pause before the reader is taken to the extremity of his emotional reaction to pain more extreme than any other captured throughout the novel.
