Previous
Chapter 6
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
On the beach, the narrator describes how the sun has risen completely above the line of the horizon. The waves roll into the shore rhythmically, with the incessant energy of an engine. In the garden, the birds have gone their separate ways, each singing its own song from its own vantage point. They are beautiful in the bright sunlight and they sing as if their lives—and the whole world—depend on their song. Occasionally, they swoop down to the earth to snatch up a meal, then fly back to perches from which they can see the countryside unfolding beneath them. Inside, the sun drives “sharp wedges” into the rooms, its light making everything seem almost supernaturally sharp and in focus. Colors intensify and the shadows are driven away.
In the garden, the birds have reached the height of their beauty and their singing. But inside the house—in the realm of human affairs—the sunlight drives “wedges” into the rooms, suggesting a potential for things to be separated, broken, divided from each other. At this moment in the day—and in the protagonists’ lives—death seems far away. They are, after all, in the prime of their lives. There are no shadows—no hints of death—in the house.
Themes
