The Waves Analysis

Starting out in a nursery in an unidentified area of England, The Waves takes its characters (and, by extension, us) all over the U.K. during the course of the story. However, Woolf often uses pret...

Defining the narrative perspective for The Waves is kind of tricky. Technically there is a third-person omniscient narrator that interweaves the thoughts of the six different narrators, but aside f...

The Waves may represent the peak of Woolf's Modernist aesthetics. Why, you may ask? Ah, we're glad you asked! Here you go:It takes some pretty hefty risks with narrative perspective and structure (...

There's tons o' death and decay in The Waves. We look on as the narrators age, endure the death of two friends, and often fixate on all the stuff that is rotting and/or dying (this book makes windf...

Using an entire aquarium's worth of water metaphors to describe the emotions of its characters, The Waves also brings its obsession with fluidity into its narrative style: stream-of-consciousness....

As you probably gathered from all the water metaphors and the use of chapter intros that focus on an ocean landscape at different stages of the day/tide, water is the central metaphor in this novel...

Bernard leaves us on a semi-hopeful note, suggesting that, after all the characters' teeth-gnashing about death, aging, and alienation from others, he's going to fight against the forces of decline...

Woolf's fluid, allusive stream-of-consciousness style can be heavy sledding on a normal day, and The Waves takes extra risks in experimenting with point-of-view, plot, and overall narration. You ma...

In the GardenWe meet our six narrators when they are children in a nursery school together, spending their days in lessons and frolicking outdoors in the garden like (excessively morbid) little lam...

During this phase, the six narrators are children, just setting out in the world and struggling with the emotional turmoil and wonder that even a setting as seemingly yawn-inducing as a nursery sch...

The six narrators are children attending a nursery school together. In this early stage, they mostly play around outside, sit through their lessons, and think about what makes them special and dist...

Virginia Woolf's dad was famous writer, critic, and thinker Leslie Stephen. (Source.)Woolf was good friends with T. S. Eliot, who may have been the inspirations for Louis. Check out a (relatively)...

There's a decent amount of lusting going on among the characters, for sure: Neville sweats out his unrequited love for Percival for a good long while, Rhoda and Louis have an affair, and the sensuo...

Virgil (2b.4; 2b.36; 3b.27)Lucretius (2b.4; 4b.41; 9b.9)Catullus (2b.4; 2b.30; 2b.35; 2b.57; 3b.17)Horace (2b.45; 9b.9)Tennyson (2b.45)Keats (2b.45)Matthew Arnold (2b.45)Pope (2b.30)Dryden (2b.30)L...