The Waves: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Solid and self-assured in his maturity, Bernard makes arrangements for everyone in the friend group to meet together for the first time since Percival’s death, at a restaurant at Hampton Court. Still, his assurance briefly fails in the moment that he greets his friends, because he’s all too aware of how shocking and how unfamiliar it is, how it takes time for old feelings to reignite and for their relationships to run once more in their established grooves.

As they sit down together, Neville realizes that the first emotion they all feel is sorrow that Percival will not—cannot—make their company complete ever again. He also knows this is a moment of natural competition, and he feels pressure to show that he has “passed”—that he has the credentials in his pocket. Credentials for what, he does not say. And he’s momentarily unnerved by Susan’s complete self-possession. She doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody, unlike Neville. In his mind, he tries to take her down a peg by characterizing her life as boring in contrast to his wild and exciting one. Yet, he realizes that his life isn’t full of limitless possibilities anymore, either. They’ve all made choices that have set the parameters of their adult lives.

Susan feels Neville’s antagonism and counters it with her own version of events. She admits he sees deeply into things but contends that his focus is too narrow. He sees deeply into his lovers, but only in short glimpse before they leave him. He sees details but misses the bigger context. He sees things as they happen but misses the deeper cycles of life and time. Through the window, Rhoda sees the sun setting, the light fading from the sky.

With sadness, Bernard remarks how difficult it is, now that they are all middle-aged adults, to recapture the easy movements of their childhood friendships. He’s all too aware of the way he’s become stuck in his own life, fixed in place like a puzzle piece wedged into the puzzle. Yet, in some ways, he is not fixed. His mind still wanders through possibilities and stories. It is not wedded too strongly to likes or dislikes, to certain and strong opinions. He is full of possibilities (in contrast to the fixed and opinionated Louis) and he imagines the stock of phrases he’s collected over a lifetime as clothes waiting for the right wearers to come along.

But whenever Louis thinks he’s about to discover or name something fixed and certain, someone breaks the thread of his thoughts. Jinny did it when she kissed him in the garden all those years ago, as did the schoolboys who mocked him for his Australian accent. Even now he desperately wants to look for a singular, unified meaning in their life stories, their relationships. But he can’t, nor has he been able to get over his sense of inadequacy. Even now, he wants his friends to be impressed by his business acumen. Even now, he hopes his fashionable clothes and self-important manners will distract them from the vulnerability that lies at the core of his personality. He wants to be solitary, yet he yearns for company. He has earned respect in the world, yet he doesn’t feel like he deserves it.

If Louis wants to see through to the essences of things, Jinny is happy with surfaces. She likes to keep things simple and to focus on what she can see, touch, and taste. She’s interested in whatever catches her eye, like a dog stopping to sniff at the door of a butcher shop. She feels proud of her conquests, all the men she’s drawn to herself with the smallest gesture of a finger. She weighs and judges her physical appearance as carefully as Louis adds up the financial figures for his business, and she knows how to adapt her costume and her look to each situation. She knows that her beauty is fading, but this does not alarm her.

When Rhoda arrived, she approached directly rather than sneakily as is her habit. She has gotten better at acting out the part of a normal person, even though she still doesn’t experience life the way others do. Each sensation in the dining room—the voices of Bernard and Susan as they talk to the waiter, the yellowish spots on the white tablecloth, the beauty in her friends’ faces—appears to Rhoda as a distinct and inviolable impression. There’s something both specific and timeless about this meeting. In her imagination, the room dissolves until she’s standing in a jungle teeming with life. As always, she tries to call herself back into the mundane, material world. But she knows one day she won’t be able to, and her friends will let her fall out of reality and into the abyss.

As they are sated by the meal, the friends drop into a comfortable silence. Bernard feels peaceful, and he imagines that the others—even vain and self-critical Louis—do too. For a moment, time and life itself seem to stand still, and death is suspended. But the silence is incomplete. Soon Bernard becomes aware of the ticking clock and the traffic in the street. He stands up and cries out “Fight!” Neville says they should oppose the “illimitable chaos” of time and mortality even while it’s clear to him that this is impossible. Whispering to Louis, Rhoda notes how briefly the others can stand silence. Already they’re returning to themselves. Jinny touches up her makeup and Susan buttons her coat. Yes, Louis replies, it’s because they want to prove to themselves that they’re still alive.

The friends all become aware of time once again as they leave the restaurant, but in odd ways. The flow of time makes formerly momentous things, like the reigns of kings, seem inconsequential to Bernard. Neville finds himself drawn into the historical past (to the reign of George I). Louis is drawn into his personal past, to the days when Miss Curry led him and the other children in their nighttime prayers. The six friends walk down the street, holding hands and feeling themselves fixed against time and eternity. The things that have separated them—marriages, deaths, travels, moves—all fade away.

They split into pairs, Bernard with Susan, Neville with Jinny, Rhoda with Louis. Rhoda and Louis strain to listen for the song of the world. To him, it seems as if the reunion of the six friends has stopped death itself, but Rhoda still hears an ominous drumbeat calling, “Open, open.” She thinks that if they could just get the right vantage point, everything would become clear to them. But then the spell is broken. The fantastical figures approaching Rhoda and Louis resolve themselves into the shapes of their friends. The old questions—“What do I think of you?” and “Who am I”—begin to torment Louis again.

Bernard and Neville realize that the spell has broken for them, too. Something special and inexpressible was in their grasp, but they lost it. Bernard suggests they stand for a moment beside the river, watching the lights come on in the city and imagining the lives teeming around them—lives of hope and distress, and quiet happinesses. He hears the engine of life itself (which sounds a lot like the approaching train)—and the chorus of humanity singing alongside the banks of the river. He hears these sounds even up to the moment when he boards the train bound for home and falls asleep, his ticket still clenched in his hand.