Clarissa's party is going on when the psychiatric Sir William Bradshaw and his wife arrive and tell that Septimus Werren Smith, Bradshaw's patient, committed suicide.

At first Clarissa is annoyed because the news ruin the atmosphere of the party, but after some minutes Clarissa's reaction is to walk away from the party and the guests. She imagines how Septimus dead, how he trough himself to the window…

Clarissa is the interior of Virginia. All the text develops into two parallel thoughts: what crossing Virginia's mind after know what happened to Septimus and the external perception in the party.

Septimus was an insane man, decided to stop living: life is unutterable for him. When someone commit suicide is a sign.

Reading from this text we understand what are the important things in our lives because our life is just a chat, and hide behind masks. It is a typically modernist text becaused believed to reach significance, things function, to communicate. Solitude is the inability to communicate. Then death can be liberation.

In the first sequence Clarissa's reaction to Septimus death she feels like burning, she sees the ground rising towards the falling body, she hears the thud in his brain and then only blackness.

Then Clarissa thinks about death, for her is an act of defiance, an attempt to communication which in life can be difficult. Life is compare with panic, terror, people live in community because they find strength in each other.

In the fourth paragraph Clarissa thinks Sir Bradshaw is evil, capable of extreme atrocities.

But Clarissa demonstrates that the effort to keep living a life one has receive from one's parents, she has managed to go on because she has her husband's support.  

In the last paragraph after seeing the old woman at the window and hearing the clock striking, Clarissa realizes that she must live her life, go back to the party and join her friends; she feels that it is "an extraordinary night" and she is not afraid any more. She feels vulnerable like Septimus, but he has done it for her. She has understood her life better.