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Chapter 2
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
The narrator describes the beach again. As the sun rises higher, the waves sparkle with light. The brightness raises sharp shadows on the grass and the birds sing joyfully in the garden. When the sunlight falls on the exterior walls of the house, it catches something green in the window and makes it sparkle like an emerald. Its warmth encourages the flower buds to blossom. And all the while, the waves break with “muffled thuds” on the shore.
This vignette describes the beach and suggests the passage of time with the rising of the sun and the endless repetition of the waves on the shore. It fills in the years between the first chapter’s impressionistic descriptions of childhood and the next era—boarding school.
Themes
