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The Power and Limitations of Storytelling
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Waves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
When they are all young adults, Percival leaves Bernard, Neville, Susan, Louis, Rhoda, and Jinny behind in England while he travels to India on what the book implies is some sort of imperialist business—India was a colony of Great Britain until 1947. Louis, too, participates in British economic imperialism as some sort of overseas merchant. Through these characters—and their friends’ reactions toward them—the novel explores the enduring legacy of British Imperialism in the early 20th century, at a moment when countries like India were advocating for but had not yet achieved freedom. The novel participates in the casual racism born of colonial oppression. The friends characterize Indians using racists terms like “savage,” and they imagine them as dirty and uncivilized. Moreover, they imagine Percival solving the country’s unspecified problems through his exemplary British might. In his business, Louis sees himself imposing a British order on (presumably Indigenous) chaos through capitalism.
Although the novel doesn’t criticize these imperialist worldviews, neither does it suggest that they are an unmitigated good, either—at least not in comparison to a worldview that primarily values individual human lives. Notably, Percival dies in India during a horserace that Bernard implies was a fundamentally frivolous activity. Taken symbolically, his death could suggest that individual flourishing under colonialism isn’t possible—at least for the colonizers themselves. And while Louis’s success in business speaks highly for his character—Bernard and Neville frequently characterize him as the group’s superlative member, the one most qualified to judge the rest—he also sees himself as emotionally bankrupt and doesn’t lead a particularly deep or meaningful life. The flawed complexity of Louis’s character again suggests that colonial conquest creates problems (at least for the colonizer; the oppressed don’t get to speak for themselves in this book). Louis knows that his focus on business is petty and meaningless compared to art and love. Thus, while the book participates in and celebrates the imperialist and colonialist history of Britain, it nevertheless uneasily acknowledges the emptiness at the heart of conquest—at least in small, specific, and individualized ways.
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Colonialism and Conquest ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Colonialism and Conquest appears in each chapter of The Waves. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Colonialism and Conquest Quotes in The Waves
Below you will find the important quotes in The Waves related to the theme of Colonialism and Conquest.
Chapter 4
Quotes
Now I will lean sideways as if to scratch my thigh. So I shall see Percival. There he sits, upright among the smaller fry. He breathes through his straight nose rather heavily. His blue, and oddly inexpressive eyes, are fixed with pagan indifference upon the pillar opposite. He would make an admirable churchwarden. He should have a birch and beat little boys for misdemeanors. He is allied with the Latin phrases on the memorial brasses. He sees nothing; he hears nothing. He is remote from us all in a pagan universe. But look—he flicks his hand at the back of his neck. For such gestures one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime. Dalton, Jones, Edgar and Bateman flick their hands to the backs of their necks likewise. But they do not succeed.
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I am now a boy only with a colonial accent holding my knuckles against Mr. Wickham’s grained oak door. The day has been full of ignominies and triumphs concealed from fear of laughter. I am the best scholar in the school. But when darkness comes I put off this unenviable body—my large nose, my thin lips, my colonial accent—and inhabit space. I am then Virgil’s companion, and Plato’s. I am then the last scion of one of the great houses of France. But I am also one who will force himself to desert these windy and moonlit territories, these midnight wanderings, and confront grained oak doors. I will achieve in my life—Heaven grant that it be not long—some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.
Chapter 8
Quotes
“By applying the standards of the West, by using the violent language that is natural to him, the bullock-cart is righted in less than five minutes. The Oriental problem is solved. he rides on; the multitude cluster round him, regarding him as if he were—what indeed he is—a God,” [said Bernard.]
“[…] and look—the outermost parts of the earth […] India for instance, rise into our purview. The world that had been shrivelled, rounds itself; remote provinces are fetched up out of darkness; we see muddy roads, twisted jungle, swarms of men, and the vulture that feeds on some bloated carcass as within our scope, part of our proud and splendid province, since Percival […] advances down a solitary path, has his camp pitched among desolate trees, and sits alone, looking at the enormous mountains.”
