Virginia Woolf is quite an eccentric writer; language is definitely one of her strong suits and that can be seen in her memoir Moments of Being. She uses sentence structure and vocabulary to create the feelings that she wishes the reader to have, adding depth and character to her writings. In an excerpt from her memoir, she writes about a lesson taught by her father. Beginning the story with a background, Woolf describes her life in Cornwall, England as a young girl. Specifically, she recalls sailing with her father and catching fish. Woolf emphasizes the significance of these sailing expeditions with her diction—she describes them as being a “treat”, suggesting that they were not very often, however, she also uses the words “one day” and “sometimes”, telling the reader that while they did not happen often, they did happen many times. More specifically, there were numerous exciting or important events that occurred. Later on she very subtly hints that perhaps the reason why these trips were not very often were because her father did not like watching fish being caught; something he mentions at the end of the story. It encourages the reader to question why the father even took her on the trips in the first place—was it because he knew …show more content…
This builds suspense in the story, causing the reader to wonder what the resolution may end up to be. It also tells of the significance of her father in the story, as he is the only one who uses actual dialogue throughout the whole thing; plus the fact that she decided to stop doing something she loved because of the opinion of her father. She placed family over her own enjoyment, even though her father stated that she could go on her own if she wanted to. This, as well as the father being the only source of dialogue, lets the reader know just how important he is to Woolf as a young