The Waves: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

One morning, while shaving, Bernard has a bit of a midlife crisis. It’s not so much that he feels time is speeding up as it’s coming to a point, and he’s spent the past years in a sort of habitual daze. Without really realizing what he’s doing, he books a 10-day trip to Rome. In the eternal city, he sees that life is very much the same everywhere, as the people passing by in the streets and in the countryside are not unlike the people in England. But he feels himself separated from them, as if he’s recovering from a long illness.

In some ways, Bernard feels as if he’s changed—like he sheds his own skin periodically. But in others, he recognizes that he’s the same old person as before. He still carries a notebook with him, still captures images and neat turns of phrase that appeal to him, still hasn’t managed to weave these together into the life-defining book he used to imagine he’d write one day. Talking to himself, encouraging himself to embrace this next chapter of his life, Bernard goes to a café for lunch where, much to his surprise, he recognizes a man whom he once knew as a schoolboy.

On a hot afternoon, Susan surveys her life with contentment. She no longer feels the powerful emotions of her childhood—the extreme love and hate—but rather feels balanced, rooted, and peaceful. She has planted and nurtured trees, flowers, crops, and her sons and daughters, and she feels satisfied with what she has accomplished. She measures her life in Christmases and jars of preserves and bags of mushrooms stored away to eat later, and in memorials she has made for those who have died. She wonders what could disturb this calmness, where disruption could come from. But still, sometimes her contentment itself threatens to smother her. Sometimes she misses the keen feelings of her childhood, the sharpness of its images and experiences.

Sometimes Susan thinks of Elvedon and the imaginative games she played there with Bernard. Sometimes she thinks of Percival, who loved her and who died in India so many years earlier. But generally, she doesn’t dwell on the past. She matter-of-factly prunes the dead blooms from her flower gardens and thinks with satisfaction about her achievements.

Jinny is standing in a station of the London Underground, at the beating heart of the city, amid a crowd of intrepid people. She inadvertently catches sight of her reflection, and it shocks her because she is no longer as young and beautiful as before. She momentarily feels her own mortality. Then, with pride, she asserts herself. She composes her face and looks again, confident in her ability to attract people, even if it requires more work now than once it did. She belongs to a proud and mighty people (the British), and she won’t be cowed by anything in the world. She drives to her house and places cut flowers in vases in preparation for the evening’s party. Both old friends and new men will attend the party, because sometimes when she says “come,” men still do.

Neville passes Jinny’s house as her latest eager beau arrives. He notices the younger man but passes on. Once, his youthful passions tormented him. Now, they are calmer. He feels free and peaceful. Looking at the world, he sees life as one eternal poem. Everyone has their part to play in it. Tortured souls, like Rhoda and Louis, aren’t content to just play their role in the drama. They want to understand it, to transcend life or to escape it. But Neville knows this is impossible. He listens with attention to the poem of life, working hard to discern its often-occult meaning. This requires patience and care. But this attentive listening satisfies Neville.

Louis has become more and more successful as the years have gone on, yet he still feels like an outcast in society, unable to prove himself or to rise above his provincial roots. Rhoda was his lover once. He felt like she understood him a little, but she left him. His latest mistress is a cockney-accented actress whom he looks down on. Coming home from the office, he takes down a book of poetry and attempts to make sense of his life through an antique poem about the western wind. He’s not even sure he can make sense of life, but to the extent he can, he thinks the point is to see how the threads of an individual’s—and his or her society’s—history weave together. From this point of view, death starts to seem unreal, even though Louis still thinks of Percival’s death.

Somewhere in southern Spain, riding a mule to the top of a mountain from which she will be able to glimpse Africa, Rhoda considers her enduring discomfort with “life” and “human beings.” For many years she capitulated to the pressure to imitate others, to try to fit into life as most people live it. But she never succeeded. She became Louis’s lover but left him because she feared being trapped by his embraces. She remembers her epiphany in the music hall after Percival’s death about the square house on the oblong of reality, a house she wishes to escape. She feels herself dissolving, but she can’t escape reality. She notices the trees and buildings around her. She dismounts and places her hand on the solid door of the inn.