The war destroyed Septimus Smith: Virginia Woolf makes this point clear. One of the first things that we should be concerned with is what, exactly, was destroyed. Before the war, Septimus was absentminded, or at least he did not care enough about social amenities to observe them. Like Peter's playing with his pocketknife in public, Septimus neglected washing his hands. These are small matters but Virginia Woolf's style is sparse and suggests by these hints that each of these men had a streak of the rebel in him. Peter was a romantic, open, adventurous man; Septimus was a poet. He stammered, lectured on Shakespeare, did not take care of his health, kept irregular hours, and had a wistful, poetic love affair with a Miss Pole. He was thoroughly undisciplined. To his employer, he appeared to have a serious lack of manly, commercial initiative.
It was the war which, in the opinion of those who knew and worked with Septimus, made a man of him. Yet Septimus had no real grasp of what he was doing when he volunteered for the war. Virginia Woolf insists that Septimus Smith's England was not the England of most soldiers. His England existed only in literature. It was not to save an economically and politically distressed island that Septimus went forth to war.
Septimus himself, for a time, became proud of his manly nonemotional reaction to military carnage. He faced death and did not flinch: this was what it meant to be a mature man. Before the war, Septimus had been a disciple of literary romance; during the war, he was converted to the popular romance of the brave, undaunted hero one sees on recruiting posters. Ironically, the war did not metamorphose Septimus into a man: the war emasculated Septimus. It left him in horror of himself. He was a tragic casualty — a walking corpse because he could not care any longer what happened to himself or anyone else. His capacity for compassion was destroyed and he is very conscious of what has been lost.
