Previous
Chapter 7
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
Bernard takes an early train into London to meet Neville, Louis, Susan, Jinny, Rhoda, and Percival for a farewell dinner. Percival is going to India. Bernard is bursting with joy and excitement. Being in a crowd always dissolves Bernard’s sense of individuality, a sensation he relishes. He feels at one with the great rush and jumble of humanity around him, at least until he remembers the events of his one, specific, particular life. For instance, he just got engaged a few days earlier. He looks forward to seeing his friends in part because it’s easier to remember who he is in their presence. In a way, he envies Louis and Rhoda’s solitary existences—the way they are who they are whether alone or in a crowd. Bernard needs people around him to perform, to fully create the stories always bubbling in his mind.
As always, Bernard likes nothing better than being in a crowd. He feels the most himself when he’s surrounded by others, and this in turn suggests that an important part of the human experience is precisely this sense of community. Readers can compare this to how traumatized Louis and Rhoda feel by their exclusion. Even Susan lives in a world populated by shepherds and farmers—a community she sees herself as part of. Similarly, Percival’s impending departure draws the friends together, back into their childhood community in ways that will precipitate further insight into their natures. Readers should note that the very magnificent and very English Percival is bound for India—one of England’s largest and most important colonies.
Themes
Neville arrives at the appointed restaurant early so he can relish the anticipation—and the agony—of waiting for Percival to appear. Each time someone who isn’t Percival comes into the room, Neville feels the full weight of the world’s cruelty and indifference. He watches Louis—proud and desperate for approval—enter, then plain and simple but decisive Susan. Rhoda slips in almost invisibly, hiding behind others as she slinks toward the table. Neville is acutely aware that her friends both draw and repel her, and that she both wants and fears being in their presence. It’s Susan who first notices Jinny enter, so beautiful and splendidly dressed that she draws the eyes of everyone in the room. Then Bernard, affable and gregarious, arrives. His love of life and humanity makes everything feel like a party.
Although they’re still quite young, the six friends are maturing and becoming ever more entrenched in their own paths and personalities. Louis and Rhoda remain outsiders. Jinny’s worldly beauty makes her the center of the room’s attention, just as she has always wanted to be. Neville still yearns for solace and meaning in the arms of a lover. And Bernard is as friendly as ever, and he’s the glue that holds the group together at least as much (if not more) than their affection for Percival.
Themes
Finally, Percival walks into the restaurant, much to Neville’s relief. Bernard looks at his friend and thinks about how he’s always stood out among the crowd, always been a hero to others. His presence imposes hierarchy and order on his friends, if not on the whole world. He draws them from isolation into communion. The six think about their shared childhood experiences at Elvedon and their years at primary school, when they were still together. Louis feels that they were broken up after that, when Neville and Bernard went to college and he did not. Jinny is aware of how her and Rhoda’s socialite lives diverge from Susan’s country one, but she’s less aware of how isolated Rhoda always felt. They are drawn together again by an emotion deeper than love. All the while, though, each friend remains distinct from the others in their own mind.
Notably, earlier chapters never showed scenes in which Rhoda, Susan, or Jinny interacted with Percival. This further underlines the feeling that he’s not as much a person as an idea. One way to interpret the book’s description of Percival is to note the way he represents an example of Imperial Englishness—notably, his friends depict him as a heroic leader. This moment also underlines how disparate the protagonists’ lives have become as they enter adulthood. All six long to return to the original union they shared in the earliest chapters and although Percival gives them a sense of communion, it’s not quite the same.
Themes
Louis wants love and respect, and he clings to a series of imagined past lives more glorious than his present one. Although he neither respects nor likes anyone in the group other than Susan and Percival, he skipped lunch hoping to excite Jinny’s sympathy. Jinny experiences life on a superficial level, focused on the way she and others look and carry themselves. Driven, determined Neville thinks himself as graceless as Jinny is beautiful and feels unlovable because of it. He suffers, but privately, not performatively, like Louis.
Each of the characters, stuck in their own perceptions, sees only a part of the truth. Readers, with access to everyone’s thoughts (except, of course, Percival’s) get a better picture. Readers can see the ways in which Louis is an architect of his own distress; in fact, he’s not the only one who feels isolated and lonely. Everyone (except perhaps Jinny and Bernard) feel that way sometimes—even if Louis can’t see it.
Themes
Get the entire The Waves LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rhoda feels an even deeper sense of isolation than Louis. She finds life terrifying, as if she’s always waiting for something terrifying to pounce on her like a tiger. For her, time isn’t a flow of connected moments or a web of relationships but a series of discrete experiences. Her life is a swirling, disorienting series of images. She can only pretend to experience continuity, to know where she’s going.
In contrast to Louis, who contributes to his own isolation with his superior attitude and his continual focus on how he believes the people around him to be judging him, Rhoda is truly disconnected from human relationships because she’s truly disconnected from the flow of time. And actually being stuck on the outside—as opposed to the romantic, self-pitying indulgence of Louis—is terrifying. Death lurks in the form of the tiger behind the closed door.
Themes
Susan also feels distinct from the others, separated by her maternal and natural sensibilities. She understands only the most primal feelings—“love, hate, rage and pain”—everything else seems empty and pointless. She imagines herself in and also as the fields around her house, participating in the cycles of life by bearing and raising children. She knows her children will be the center and purpose of her life.
Similarly, Susan seems to be more isolated at this moment than Louis is thanks to her rural life. But she finds meaning there that the others have yet to grasp for themselves. Her desire to have children of her own flows from her cyclical sense of time (in stark contrast to Rhoda’s preceding soliloquy). In a moment, when the group starts imagining India, she’ll contribute the least, confirming her provincial focus.
Themes
In a way, Bernard envies Louis and Rhoda for their autonomy, for the way they continue to be—or feel most comfortable as—their own selves when they’re alone. He feels that he only comes into existence in a crowd. Still, he has confidence in his ability to craft stories out of air and nothing (at least when he’s in the company of others). He feels that his stories are his gift to the world, and he knows that he shares them generously.
Bernard still defines himself in relationship to others, and while this makes him different from his friends, the book doesn’t denigrate it as bad or wrong. Indeed, the way Bernard comes to life in a crowd mirrors the way a story has no meaning unless it’s being told to (or read by) an audience.
Themes
The friends are keenly aware of the bustle of London around them, but they also start to imagine exotic, faraway India, where Percival is bound. Bernard imagines Percival like a savior god in India, bringing Western order to “oriental” chaos. Rhoda likewise imagines a magnificent Percival facing alone the challenges of a land of “desolate trees” and “enormous mountains.”
As the friends begin to imagine Percival in India, they construct an image built on the colonial and imperialist ambitions, biases, and assumptions of their culture. Percival, as England, becomes a glorious figure that offers salvation and civilization to places imagined as savage and sublime. In fact, British imperialism visited violence, oppression, and the extraction of precious resources on the peoples it colonized.
Themes
Rhoda sees something else, too, imagining a distant landscape in which a white, moving figure stands in front of the sea. It is not one of the friends. Rhoda tries to sneak behind it to the sea to “replenish [her] emptiness” in the waves, and for an instant, she feels like she’s arrived at her destination.
While imagining Percival’s glory, Rhoda sees something else, too. The enigmatic figure standing in front of the waves (which represent the cycle of life) sounds like death. But it’s unclear whose: the vision comes in relation to Percival, yet it’s Rhoda who tries to reach the sea beyond death.
Themes
Together, Rhoda and Louis imagine a scene from some far-off place, in which naked men with spears dance to the sound of horns, trumpets, and drums. The dancers are foreign and exotic, and they form a procession bearing flowered garlands that “forbode[s] decay.” Death, Louis observes, “is woven in with violets.” But flowers bring Jinny back to the superficial world of appearances. She sees flowering trees outside the windows, and it makes her think about how young and beautiful she and her friends are, how far away from death.
Returning to Percival’s upcoming adventure, Rhoda and Louis paint sensationalized, prejudicial visions of India as a place of savagery and magic. Death lurks there, Louis acknowledges, though none of the friends can imagine any harm coming to the great and mighty Percival. Or to any of them, Jinny decides, because they are all too young and too beautiful to die.
Themes
As the dinner comes to an end, the friends share a sense that their circle is about to break—not just for the evening, but irrevocably, by life itself. Bernard is engaged to be married. Percival is about to go off to India. But Louis knows that, even as they part, something will hold them together. None of them can say for sure what the force is—love or hate or Percival, or “youth and beauty”—but none of them can deny it. It is large enough to encompass the whole world and everything in it. Likewise, Bernard pities Percival because he’s the one calling a cab and leaving. Rhoda notices the gathering clouds. Agony overtakes Neville as Percival—the source of his light and happiness—drives away.
For a moment, the friends feel themselves exempt from time, as though in a perfect circle of communion. Yet, they cannot hold time at bay indefinitely. They will not stay young forever, and Percival will soon sail for India. Time will move on and carry them toward their futures no matter what. Yet, even as the moment ends, Louis and Bernard recognize that the bond between them transcend space and time. That’s why Rhoda’s and Neville’s distress is so noticeable: it suggests that Percival’s departure might never be reversed.
Themes
