ANALYSIS	 Mrs Dalloway (1925) – Incipit
The narration starts in “media res”. The novelist introduces instantly the main character, as the title suggests, and the action he is going to do. In the following lines, the novelist hints at other characters and situations. However one turning point of V. Woolf’s narration is the plot reduced to the minimum, so the reader can only have an unclear vision of the storyline. 
The metaphor that associates the morning to some children playing in a beach is rendered with the free indirect speech. The intelligent reader understands that who is speaking is Mrs Dalloway, and that in her mind the freshness of that morning reminds a particular feeling lived or imagined. The same process of associations returns also in the following period, where the sound element of a little squeak brought her from the external reality to her thoughts. 
The technique used in this case is the flashback: Mrs Dalloway came back to the past, remembering how the sensation she used to feel are bright in her mind. In all the rest of the paragraph is developed the narration of the past moments lived by Ms Dalloway with the technique of the interior monologue. Indeed, she starts making associations between her memories, reflecting on the details that has remained and on those that disappeared. For example, she remembers a few sayings of Peter Walsh, when he joked with her contemplation of the natural atmosphere, while she doesn’t remember other details of his aspect or his life.
The language is elevated and poetical. The novelists uses frequently the repetition of expressions like was that it? or what a …! to give rhythm to the narration and renders the feelings of the speaking voice – Mrs Dalloway. The rhetorical language is evident also in the frequent use of similes, as like the flap of a wave, of sinestesie, as the wave for the sea, and of words that sound mild and suggest the atmosphere of a memory. Finally, the use of asyndeton has the function to render the slow time of the memory, that doesn’t follow the rhythm of external life.