Contrast with Mrs. Ramsay’s Vision: Mrs. Ramsay sees the dinner party as a unity. She brings together Mr. Ramsay, James, Cam, Prue, Andrew, Nancy, Roger, Jasper, Rose, Lily Briscoe, William Bankes, Charles Tansley, Augustus Carmichael, Paul Rayley, and Minta Doyle. Woolf writes about her that she brings them together. But Bankes does not feel this beauty. He only sees wasted hours. He fails to see the deeper harmony Mrs. Ramsay creates. 

Bankes’s Lonely Perspective: Bankes is alone. He never married. He lives by reason, not by emotion. At the dinner table in the summer house, he feels separate. He cannot share Mrs. Ramsay’s warmth. He cannot enjoy the laughter of James, Cam, or Lily Briscoe. His lonely view makes him judge harshly. For him, the dinner is only noise and food, not meaning. So, Woolf says about his loneliness that,

“William Bankes--poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone.”