- This chapter is all about Bernard. He opens by saying that he's going to sum up the meaning of his whole life. He claims to be addressing someone he doesn't know… but who he might have met once on a ship to Africa. Wait, what? When did Bernard go to Africa?
- Apparently this dialogue is happening at a table, where Bernard sits pouring wine and they are about to eat. He claims that he's going to tell his drinking buddy a story; he says, "…In order to make you understand, to give you my life, I must tell you a story—and there are so many, and so many—stories of childhood, stories of school, love, marriage, death, and so on; and some of them are true" (9b.2).
- Bernard then proceeds to recount memories of his childhood with the other narrators. He describes how each of the narrators developed a separate identity, noting the painfulness of this process of separation. Bernard is careful to note that he's escaped some of the "excesses" to which his friends fell prey (9b.5).
- He then thinks about Percival, including how he was at school, his death, and the man he would have been.
- Next, he thinks of Louis, describing their relationship and giving an overview of his friend's personality and life trajectory. He then does the same thing in discussing Neville. Finally, he contrasts his own preferences and ways of dealing with the world to those of these two friends.
- Bernard moves on to thinking about Jinny, Susan, and Rhoda. He also thinks about how much he himself has changed, contrasting his changing nature with the endurance of the willow tree by the river… which he remembers sitting near with Neville, Percival, Jinny, and others.
- He offers a series of memories sprinkled with his own observations about life and its progress, as well as some pieces of life philosophy. He sounds like an old coot.
- He even imagines how his now-deceased biographer (wait, Bernard actually did end up with a biographer? Is he famous?) would describe some of the events of his life.
- Now, Bernard makes a bit of a shift, talking about the many different Bernards that have existed throughout his life.
- He continues to reflect on how life progressed and developed for him, noting that Percival's death "crashed" into a life that had previously been "pleasant" and "good" (9b.30-31).
- He remembers how he reacted in the wake of Percival's death (both emotionally and through his actions) and all the reflections it inspired. He describes having a "disillusioned clarity" in the wake of that event, asserting, "I was like one admitted behind the scenes: like one shown how the effects are produced" (9b.31).
- He then indicates that, in order decipher "the incomprehensible nature of this our life," he turned to his friends (instead of priests and poetry, which were the possible alternatives, according to him).
- He describes visiting Susan in Lincolnshire that summer after Percival's death and getting bummed out by seeing her life there. He says he felt stopped in his tracks afterwards, no longer inspired by everyday life to make poetry. However, eventually he says that his resolve to "Fight! Fight!" returned (9b.38).
- He describes the way time passed from there, life being once again "pleasant" and "good" (9b.40).
- However, after a certain amount of time, he says he felt that "Time has given the arrangement another shake" (9b.41). He says he went in search of Neville. It appears that they mostly talked Shakespeare, until it became clear that Neville was waiting for someone else, and Bernard departed.
- He then describes having gone to visit Rhoda and Louis (all the while contemplating the nature of their relationship because of course he did: he's Bernard), but they weren't at home.
- Next, he thinks of Jinny and Susan and the group of friends more generally. He makes a curious statement about not knowing how to distinguish his own life from that of Jinny, Louis, Rhoda, Susan, or Neville. What does that mean?
- He then remembers that dinner at Hampton Court, when everyone started out fairly uncomfortable and eventually settled in and "stopped comparing" (9b.49).
- Still thinking of Hampton Court, Bernard remembers walking after dinner and separating off from Rhoda and Louis. He recalls being unable to recover from a feeling of "dissipation" that had overtaken him in that moment (9b.50). He wonders whether that moment might have been a kind of death. What the what?
- He then describes feeling "pinioned" and "powerless" in the wake of this moment (9b.52); indeed, it seems he felt kind of dead, saying, "We are cut, we are fallen" (9b.52).
- However, he then went to get a haircut (that always cheers us up) and got all curious about the barber and his perspective on life, which seemed to snap him out of it. Hmm, it seems like Bernard's moods are pretty dependably up and down.
- After pulling himself out of his latest crummy mood, he says he was interested in going to find Rhoda but found that she had killed herself. Um… what? That's so sad!
- Fresh from his new haircut and this sad news, Bernard walked by St. Paul's cathedral and entered. There, he thought about Louis, did some people watching, reflected on his reaction to the cathedral.
- He then left the cathedral and kept walking. He muttered poetry to himself, thought about the past, and pondered his own identity. In particular, he thought of a moment he spent leaning on a gate by a field (he does not specify exactly when or where this transpired, but says he was old at the time), in which he considered his regrets and attempts to talk to some other part of himself. Describing this moment, he says, "I spoke to that self who had been with me in many tremendous adventures; the faithful man who sits over the fire when everybody has gone to bed" (9b.57).
- Unfortunately, however, this "other self" made no reply, Bernard says, causing him to feel "complete desertion" and as though "Now there is nothing" (9b.58). Bernard likens that moment to an eclipse.
- However, as in the past, his gloom eventually lifted and he felt as though he were entering a new world, a world that he now saw "without a self" (9b.64). He describes his reaction to this "new" world and contrasts it with his memory of sitting "on the turf somewhere high above the flow of the sea and the sound of the woods" and looking at "the house, the garden, and the waves breaking" while an old nurse turned the pages of a book and said, "Look. This is the truth" (9b.65).
- Apparently all this was on Bernard's mind when he arrived to eat at a restaurant that night and met his current dinner companion, inviting him to dinner on the spot.
- Now, they've apparently finished their meal, and Bernard ponders the existence of everything around him, asking if the city outside the restaurant is London or Paris, doubting the reality of the tables and other objects in the room, and considering whether the supposedly six different narrators he has been describing are all just part of him.
- He asks, "I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda, and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know. We sat here together. But now Percival is dead, and Rhoda is dead; we are divided; we are not here. Yet I cannot find any obstacle separating us. There is no division between me and them. As I talked I felt, 'I am you.' This difference we make so much of, this identity we so feverishly cherish, was overcome" (9b.68).
- Talk about a twist—they were all the same person all along?
- Bernard proceeds with more observations and reflections. He moves quickly from laying claim to some kind of privileged perspective to saying feels like a "nothing but... an old man" when he catches his dinner companion's eye (9b.73).
- However, soon things cycle back around as they wait for the bill, and Bernard claims he can once again see "complexity and the reality and the struggle" (9b.76), and he thanks his companion for helping to enable this turnaround. Huh. The previous moment he was cursing him for making him feel old. Oh, Bernard, you fickle beast.
- Now Bernard is alone, and his book of phrases (which he predicts will be swept up in the morning) has fallen on the floor. He says he has "done with phrases" (9b.79). Uh, yeah, haven't we heard this before?
- Also, he's reflecting on how awesome it is to be alone. Is this really still Bernard? He claims to wish to continue sitting there indefinitely in the restaurant, all alone.
- But the waiter finishes his own dinner and wants to close up, so Bernard finds he has to leave.
- He's pretty grumpy about being forced out into the street, as he's old and tired. However, he notes that "There is a sense of the break of day," and suggests evidence of "the eternal renewal" in the way the sky looks and the sounds and sights of the world around him (9b.83).
- He says, "And in me too the wave rises," and he claims to ride against his enemy, which is death (9b.84).
- The novel ends with him resolving to continue fighting this enemy. There is also one final italicized line (in the style of the chapter intros) announcing that the waves were crashing against the shore.