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Chapter 4
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
As the sun continues to rise, the narrator describes how its light changes the colors of everything on the beach. In the garden, a chorus of birds sings with abandon, until a black cat stalks past and alarms them, sending them briefly into the sky before they settle back into the tree. From there, they survey the garden, looking at…what? Perhaps they are looking at bright flowers among the shady leaves or the light sparkling on the dancing leaves of the apple trees or the drops of dew sparkling in the hedges. Suddenly, one of the birds drops to the earth, beneath the trees where fallen fruit lies rotting, and snatches up a worm. The light from the rising sun streams into the windows of the house, illuminating its objects and casting shadows on the walls. The wind whips the waves higher until they attack the shore like “turbaned warriors.”
As the protagonists enter the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, the interlude imagines a mid-morning scene. The birds, which stand for the protagonists, flit from tree to tree, gorging themselves on all life has to offer. But the stalking cat, rotting fruit, and worms remind readers that mortality is a condition of human existence. Finally, note the casually exotic images used to describe the waves, which invoke the colonial lands that will play an important role in the protagonists’ early adulthoods.
Themes
