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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Waves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity
The Meaning of Life
Facing Loss and Death
The Power and Limitations of Storytelling
Colonialism and Conquest
Summary
Analysis
Now the children are old enough to go to boarding schools—one for the boys and another for the girls. Bernard is nervous, even though Louis thinks he looks very composed. Walking into the school for the first time is a solemn moment for Neville, who is anxious for learning but disappointed by the pudgy, pretentious headmaster, Dr. Crane. Homesickness threatens to overwhelm Susan on her first night at school. She finds everyone there fake and shallow. Rhoda feels anonymous in the large crowd of students. Jinny doesn’t care one way or another about school, as she’s too busy imagining the kinds of evening dresses she will wear as an adult.
In the first chapter, the children’s individual impressions add up to create one description of the sunrise. Now, their impressions separate and become distinct. They aren’t sharing consciousness as they seemed to do when they described the sunrise. Louis, for instance, misses Bernard’s nerves. Readers must now remain aware of how an individual’s character and experience shape their views—just because Neville likes Dr. Crane doesn’t necessarily mean he's likeable.
Themes
Now it’s spring, and the boys attend religious services in the chapel, led by Dr. Crane. Louis loves and respects the headmaster. Neville rejects Dr. Crane’s authority and his cheerless religion. He tries to catch a glimpse of Percival, a classmate he—like everyone else—admires. Bernard dislikes the sermon for its lack of imagination or clever phrasing. Intent on being a writer, he carries a notebook with him everywhere in which he collects inspiration and charming words and phrases.
The first section of the book described the years of childhood over the course of a single day. The second section matches the years of primary education to the course of an academic year. As they grow up, each character becomes more distinct. For example, Louis, Bernard, and Neville have different opinions about their headmaster, which reflect their different temperaments. Whereas Neville is analytical and logical, Bernard loves a well-turned phrase.
Themes
After services, the boys have an afternoon off. They go outside, where Louis observes how the other boys cluster around Percival. He appreciates Percival’s “magnificence” even while he considers himself Percival’s social superior. Bernard begins telling a story. Neville listens half-heartedly to its “bubbling” and “floating” words. When the story bores Percival, it bores Neville, too—and when Bernard realizes that his story is boring the others, he trails off in embarrassment. Louis desperately wants to redeem the moment and to have peace between himself and his friends. He tries to fix the moment in his mind by poetically calling on the earth and sky. But Percival breaks the mood when he lumbers off.
This section of the book also introduces Percival. Percival isn’t so much of a character in his own right as a foil against which the other characters understand themselves. Insofar as the book codes Percival as a symbol of England and Englishness, his thoughts and opinions become the guiding light for the other boys. Thus, if he finds Bernard’s stories boring, the others find Bernard’s stories boring. This doesn’t bode well for Bernard’s success as a writer.
Themes
It’s midsummer and Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda are going to their room to change into tennis clothes. As they pass a mirror, each reflects on her life at that moment. Susan still counts down the days with a desperate homesickness. She hates it here and longs to be back with her father and her pets. She buries the days like she buries her wounds and resentments. Jinny hates her reflection because she doesn’t think she’s as pretty as Susan or Rhoda. She compensates for her plainness with constant “leaping” and “dancing” movements that draw flattering attention.
Like the boys, the girls are differentiating themselves as they mature. Jinny remains focused on the externals—what she perceives as Susan’s and Rhoda’s beauty compared to hers. But she’s also demonstrating an allure of her own in her lithe movements. She takes control of her own fate. Susan, ever the black-and-white thinker, can find nothing to love in school when it’s so different from the countryside.
Themes
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When Rhoda sees her face in the mirror, she sees herself as an insubstantial, ghostly presence compared to Susan and Jinny. She doesn’t feel as if she belongs to the real world in the same way as her friends and she spends a lot of time trying to imitate them in order to fit in. Jinny resents this behavior, while Susan sometimes shows Rhoda how to do things. But Rhoda mostly lives in her own mind, where she is deeply influenced by the power of other people’s beauty.
As she gets older, Rhoda feels more and more disconnected from the life going on around her. In a way, she comes across as the most distinct individual because her way of looking at the world is so different from the other’s (and, likely, to most readers’). In another way, she has the weakest sense of identity, since she copies the others in order to fit in. Note how she understands herself in reference to the others, however—even as they grow older, the children retain their initial bond.
Themes
While the girls wait for their turn at the tennis courts, Rhoda watches Miss Lambert (whom she loves and admires) walk past. Most of the girls mock Miss Lambert behind her back. When Jinny’s match concludes, she throws herself down on the grass, panting in exhaustion. As the hammering in her heart subsides, she comes back into her mind, resting in her growing desire to be loved and courted by a man.
The tennis game hints at Jinny’s sexual awakening as she begins to fantasize about leaving school and entering the world of adult (romantic) relationships. Similarly, Rhoda has romantically tinged feelings for Miss Lambert. The children of the first section are now on the verge of adulthood.
Themes
One afternoon, most of the boys—including Percival—go off to play cricket, leaving Louis, Neville, and Bernard behind. Louis both admires and hates the gang of boys who play cricket and lead the school’s clubs. He wants to be accepted as part of their crowd and to share their power and authority, but he’s all too aware of their meanness and violence against the younger boys.
Louis, ever the outsider, begins to realize that it’s not always wonderful to be one of the crowd. Some of the things that the others do are violent and hurtful. This obliquely reflects his experience as a colonial subject rather than a full Englishperson—and further associates Percival with the violence and power Imperial Britan used to control the places it colonized.
Themes
Neville has no interest in sports. For that perceived sin, Percival despises him, much to his distress. He loves Percival desperately yet knows they are ill-suited to each other. At the moment, Percival seems to understand poetry—at least, better than Louis does—but Neville knows that Percival is exceptional now mostly because he is young. As he ages, he will become ordinary.
It becomes increasingly clear that Neville doesn’t just admire but is actively in love with Percival, despite his flaws. Neville’s portrait casts Percival as a sort of archetype of the traditional, conventional member of society, thus further reinforcing Percival’s association with Englishness.
Themes
Bernard would have gone to play cricket, had he been ready in time, but he’s always distracted by the stories that bubble in his mind. Now, he starts to tell Neville one about Dr. Crane going to his rooms at the end of the day. He describes the headmaster taking off his shoes, emptying the change from his pockets, and sinking into a chair. Dr. Crane sees the “pink bridge” of light beckoning from the bedroom door, beyond which Mrs. Crane lies in bed, reading. But instead of crossing it, Dr. Crane wonders how he ended up as a school headmaster rather than an admiral or a judge. Bernard abandons Dr. Crane in his chair, unable to bring himself to finish the story.
The book continues to trace the growing distinctions between the boys. Louis and Neville are more interested in intellectual pursuits than sports; Bernard likes both sports and studies equally. He lets the currents of life carry him where they will. This, in conjunction with the difficulty he has finishing his stories, suggests that he will end up living more of a conventional life than the exceptional one he wishes for. But he might be happier than his more exceptional friends.
Themes
Neville likes Bernard’s stories but finds this tendency to let them trail off irritating. He wishes he could tell one of his friends about his feelings for Percival, but Bernard might then turn him into a character in a story, and Louis is too unemotional and intellectual to understand. Neville longs for someone to share things with. He has flashes of mystical vision, and the natural world no longer fulfils him as it once did.
Neville shows off his maturing sense of self in this soliloquy, which establishes the driving motivation of his life. For him, life is meaningful when he finds the one with whom he can share life—the one person who will perfectly understand (and love) him. He also sees the world like a poet, registering brief and intense impressions that indicate deeper truths.
Themes
Louis, meanwhile, longs for the evening when he can knock on the door of Mr. Wickersham’s (presumably one of the school’s teachers) and be permitted to enter. He likes to imagine himself—just a boy with a colonial accent—as a powerful and adored courtier to a king.
Louis imagines himself as an acolyte to powerful men and as a powerful man himself, but in this moment, he’s standing in a hallway and pounding on a door hoping to gain admittance. He can’t shake the feeling of being an outsider—a poor boy from the colonies—even though elsewhere in the chapter Bernard acknowledges his raw intellectual power.
Themes
Now it’s late July, just over a week before the end of the term. Susan cannot wait for these last eight days to pass, to get on the train, and to go home. She thinks about how lovely it will be to embrace her father, to wake up in her own bed and to go for an early-morning walk, and to be surrounded by her own things once more.
On the cusp of it finally, Susan cannot wait for her adult life to begin. In many ways, her school years represent an interruption because they took her from her beloved countryside. Note how little she has changed, how much of her personality—her certainty and her association with nature—remains intact from childhood.
Themes
Jinny doesn’t care about going home like Susan does, but she does look forward to the end of her schooling, when she will become a woman and will attend parties and find love. She hates the blank, empty spaces of nighttime and wishes that life were one eternal day.
Jinny is as impatient to graduate as Susan is, but for different reasons. Susan wants to go back to a more primal state of connection with nature, Jinny, on the other hand, can’t wait to begin her life as an adult in society, where she will find plenty of admirers.
Themes
In contrast, Rhoda likes nighttime, when she can imagine and dream without getting caught by anyone, because she sometimes finds herself acting out her fantasies. She wishes to live in her fantasy world and to draw on its power to make the world more beautiful and luxurious.
Rhoda dislikes light for the very reason Jinny likes it: it makes it impossible to ignore the reality of things. Again, it’s notable how the characters’ impressions, desires, and thoughts increasingly diverge across this chapter as they grow up.
Themes
Now it’s the end of school. On their graduation day, Dr. Crane presents Louis, Neville, Bernard, Percival, and the other boys with books of poetry. Louis’s respect for the headmaster has not waned, and he finds Dr. Crane’s parting words very moving. He feels grateful to have participated in the glorious tradition of education. Bernard knows that he’s in the midst of a momentous change but can only bring himself to notice tiny, discrete details about the day, like the bee buzzing around Dr. Crane and his honored guests. The end of school makes Neville sad because it means his separation from Percival, whom he still loves with abject devotion. He imagines sending Percival letters and invitations to meet only to be ignored.
Louis remains conscious of that which separates him from the others, but he feels like his education in the old-fashioned and elite world of the English boarding school has, at least, allowed him to participate in something larger than himself Bernard is less impressed by Dr. Crane’s evidently trite remarks in part because he’s always been happy to drift from one thing to the next—remember how he abandoned his project with Neville to comfort the upset Susan in Chapter 2. Neville doesn’t want school to end because it means separation from Percival, who has become so central to Neville’s understanding of himself that Neville can only imagine his future happiness based on Percival’s attention or neglect.
Themes
Susan wakes up excited on the last day of school, but she knows it won’t truly feel like the summer holidays until she descends from the train at home that evening. She swears to herself that she’ll never live in London or send her own children to school, because being away from the gentle countryside of her home has been so painful to her. London is composed of too many hard surfaces, too much shine and polish. It’s a proper place for Jinny, but not for her.
Susan has remained steadfast in her affection for the natural world since childhood, when she went into the woods to try to soothe and settle her disturbed emotions. Now she turns resolutely toward the country, even though it clearly means a separation from the five friends who have meant so much to her early life. She’s differentiating herself as she grows up.
Themes
On the northbound train home, Jinny rejoices in her freedom, too. She looks at the world flashing past the window and—when the train enters a tunnel, and the windows turn temporarily into mirrors—at the other passengers in the car. One, a man, lowers his paper and smiles at her reflection. This gives her a visceral, almost orgasmic thrill. But she withdraws into herself when she remembers that other people are watching her.
Earlier, Jinny noted how she hated the dark, empty spaces of night. The train flashing through the tunnel gives readers a sense of time speeding up as Jinny passes through dark/light, night/day cycles. Earlier, Jinny hated the mirror in which she compared herself to her friends. Now, when the window becomes a mirror, she sees herself through a man’s eyes and it’s an entirely different experience. But the train’s speed quietly warns her that her life will pass faster than she might expect.
Themes
Rhoda sees the world in a metaphorical and poetic way. As she sits on the train, she feels life welling up in her once more like a wave in the ocean with the strength and suddenness of a tiger pouncing. She looks at the countryside passing by outside the window and thinks about the silence that closes in behind the train after it passes.
Rhoda’s impressions of life retain their terrifying edge. She seems to enjoy the freedom of sitting on the train but can’t detach herself from a sensation of danger. The tiger pouncing, the menacing wave, and the silence closing in behind the train all suggest death, which sits always on the edge of her consciousness.
Themes
On the boys’ train, Louis knows that his fate diverges from the rest: Neville, Bernard, Percival, and his other friends are college-bound whereas he must now work for his living. He imagines their privileged lives in contrast to his, “behind a counter,” where he anticipates he will grow envious and bitter. But for the moment, he feels no resentment.
Son of a banker rather than a gentleman, Louis must follow his father into the trade. This yet again marks him as an outsider. It’s interesting that he imagines one day becoming jealous but not feeling it in this moment—the last moment of their childhoods the boys share.
Themes
Bernard watches Louis and Neville, each absorbed in his own thoughts, with jealousy. He struggles to be self-reflective and is instead driven to strike up conversations with others, like Walter J. Trumble, a successful tradesman in their train car. In talking to Walter, Bernard feels the oneness of humanity. He gets so lost in the conversation, he almost misses his stop and loses track of his ticket.
As he grows up, Bernard also becomes aware of the traits that distinguish him from the others. He’s jealous of his friends’ ability to see into the depths of experience, yet in this moment he has an early revelation of an important truth: as a force, life is bigger than any one person.
Themes
The train stops and Bernard exits. Neville and Louis watch him grow small on the platform as their train pulls away. Neville wonders what Bernard thought about Trumble, or if Trumble just became, like everything else seems to, an element in Bernard’s never-ending, compulsive storytelling. Neville pretends to read a book of poetry, but he is lost in thought. He wonders how his life will turn out. He suspects he will end up as an “unhappy poet” and college professor. As the train draws near to London, the “centre of the civilized world,” he feels excited and a little lost. His life is just beginning.
Bernard bumbles off, leaving Neville the final words on this part of the protagonists’ lives. Neville prophecies greatness but loneliness for himself, and his ruminations leave open the question of whether his path or Bernard’s (who seems destined for happy mediocrity) is the better one. Notably, his identification of London as the center of the civilized world betrays an imperial and colonial consciousness, and this makes obvious some of the sentiments the book has thus far only hinted at through Louis’s anguished sense of being outside English greatness.
Themes
