Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England that consisted almost entirely of the works of Shakespeare and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in the trenches... they had to be together, share, fight, argue. But when Evans... was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognizing that this was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself on feeling very little and very reasonable. The War had taught him this (Woolf 86). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Propaganda in literature and art during World War I seemed commonplace, yet many artists and authors reacted against what they saw as falsehoods occurring in propaganda. Many believed that war was not glorious, honorable, or courageous, but difficult, painful, and unnecessary. After the war, the scale of lives lost permeated the country, and soldiers returning home returned different than when they left. The authors used this as fuel to the fire, describing what real soldiers believe and experiences of war. Several authors wrote against the propaganda in the hope that their country would stop being the blind leading the blind. In this passage from Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf reacts to the propagandistic ideals she must have felt before the First World War. In the passage above, the narrator describes Septimus Smith, the tarnished war veteran of the novel. The values ​​that Septimus Smith possessed in pre-war London do not belong to him alone; they applied to many people, both men and women, living in London. Yet not all who shared these beliefs so willingly put their lives at risk for these ideals. Septimus Smith's reasons for going to war stemmed from the propaganda he was force-fed before the war. He idealizes British symbols such as Shakespeare, London culture and its “pure” women. But how could a reader not draw conclusions about where all these ideals lead Septimus Smith at this point in the novel, five years after the end of the war? His courage and patriotism have resulted in his trauma and neurosis, his inability to relate to those around him, and his apathy towards his surroundings. Because the setting of this novel takes place after the end of the war, the reader sees the ideals that Septimus once boasted in a different light. These ideals have become propaganda, myths, vanity and British naivety. Evidence of this view of propaganda is embodied in the character of Septimus Smith himself, as a traumatized and psychologically damaged war veteran. With the war's end, Septimus rejects many of the ideals he once espoused. Although the narrator does not specifically state the extent to which his views have changed, the reader no longer gets the sense that Septimus identifies as a Shakespeare-quoting Romantic anymore. It is also noteworthy that Septimus married not the pure English girl he gallantly went to France to protect, but an Italian woman he barely knew. He married her right at the end of the war, and although the two have spent the last five years together, their relationship seems cold and estranged. This is most likely due to the fact that Septimus does not know how to live in the world he finds himself in after the war. Septimus does not congratulate himself on his courage and audacity in volunteering to fight in the war, nor does he seem to think about the,.