Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
Epigraph:
"We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like the others this one too will be a form of what I dream, a structure of words, and not the flesh and bone tiger that beyond all myths paces the earth. I know these things quite well, yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me in this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest, and I go on pursuing through the hours another tiger, the beast not found in verse."—J. L. Borges, The Other Tiger, 1960
What's Up with the Epigraph?
This epigraph comes to us from the pen (or typewriter) of the captivating, fantastically imaginative Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
"The Other Tiger" is a poem that deals with the connections between language, reality, and fiction. The poem's first-person speaker writes about a tiger that he is imagining vividly; soon, though, the speaker is forced to admit that this fantastic beast has little to do with reality and is instead made up of tropes, clichés, and conventions that have been passed down through literature.
Although the speaker of the poem knows that any tiger he manages to capture in words will fail to be faithful to the "flesh and bone" tigers that really do roam the earth, he still continues to try. Likewise, even though Michael Cunningham knows that his attempts to capture the feel and flow of human consciousness in The Hours may fall short in spectacular ways, he also knows that that's no reason not to try.
Epigraph:
I have no time to describe my plans. I should say a good deal about The Hours, & my discovery; how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment."—Virginia Woolf, in her diary, August 30, 1923
What's Up with the Epigraph?
Hey, there's nothing like an epigraph to tell you exactly what an author was trying to accomplish in his or her writing.
"The Hours" was the working title that Virginia Woolf gave to the novel that eventually became Mrs. Dalloway (source), and, in this diary entry from 1923, Woolf describes the technique that she used to flesh out her characters.
As in The Hours, very little actually happens in Mrs. Dalloway. A small cast of characters go about their relatively ordinary days—running errands, attending luncheons, preparing a house for a party—but, by the end of the novel, we readers know tons about these characters' whole lives. Through memories, reactions, and impressions, Woolf "digs out caves" behind her characters and brings their pasts and their inner lives out into the light as they go about their days.
And that's exactly how Michael Cunningham goes about his business in The Hours.
So, not only does this epigraph signal the fact that Cunningham swiped Woolf's old title for his own novel, but it also announces the fact that Cunningham is going to employ the same methods that Woolf used to create lifelike, believable human characters.