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Chapter 3
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
Now the children are old enough to go to boarding schools—one for the boys and another for the girls. Bernard is nervous, even though Louis thinks he looks very composed. Walking into the school for the first time is a solemn moment for Neville, who is anxious for learning but disappointed by the pudgy, pretentious headmaster, Dr. Crane. Homesickness threatens to overwhelm Susan on her first night at school. She finds everyone there fake and shallow. Rhoda feels anonymous in the large crowd of students. Jinny doesn’t care one way or another about school, as she’s too busy imagining the kinds of evening dresses she will wear as an adult.
In the first chapter, the children’s individual impressions add up to create one description of the sunrise. Now, their impressions separate and become distinct. They aren’t sharing consciousness as they seemed to do when they described the sunrise. Louis, for instance, misses Bernard’s nerves. Readers must now remain aware of how an individual’s character and experience shape their views—just because Neville likes Dr. Crane doesn’t necessarily mean he's likeable.
Themes
Now it’s spring, and the boys attend religious services in the chapel, led by Dr. Crane. Louis loves and respects the headmaster. Neville rejects Dr. Crane’s authority and his cheerless religion. He tries to catch a glimpse of Percival, a classmate he—like everyone else—admires. Bernard dislikes the sermon for its lack of imagination or clever phrasing. Intent on being a writer, he carries a notebook with him everywhere in which he collects inspiration and charming words and phrases.
The first section of the book described the years of childhood over the course of a single day. The second section matches the years of primary education to the course of an academic year. As they grow up, each character becomes more distinct. For example, Louis, Bernard, and Neville have different opinions about their headmaster, which reflect their different temperaments. Whereas Neville is analytical and logical, Bernard loves a well-turned phrase.
Themes
After services, the boys have an afternoon off. They go outside, where Louis observes how the other boys cluster around Percival. He appreciates Percival’s “magnificence” even while he considers himself Percival’s social superior. Bernard begins telling a story. Neville listens half-heartedly to its “bubbling” and “floating” words. When the story bores Percival, it bores Neville, too—and when Bernard realizes that his story is boring the others, he trails off in embarrassment. Louis desperately wants to redeem the moment and to have peace between himself and his friends. He tries to fix the moment in his mind by poetically calling on the earth and sky. But Percival breaks the mood when he lumbers off.
Themes
It’s midsummer and Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda are going to their room to change into tennis clothes. As they pass a mirror, each reflects on her life at that moment. Susan still counts down the days with a desperate homesickness. She hates it here and longs to be back with her father and her pets. She buries the days like she buries her wounds and resentments. Jinny hates her reflection because she doesn’t think she’s as pretty as Susan or Rhoda. She compensates for her plainness with constant “leaping” and “dancing” movements that draw flattering attention.
Themes
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When Rhoda sees her face in the mirror, she sees herself as an insubstantial, ghostly presence compared to Susan and Jinny. She doesn’t feel as if she belongs to the real world in the same way as her friends and she spends a lot of time trying to imitate them in order to fit in. Jinny resents this behavior, while Susan sometimes shows Rhoda how to do things. But Rhoda mostly lives in her own mind, where she is deeply influenced by the power of other people’s beauty.
Themes
While the girls wait for their turn at the tennis courts, Rhoda watches Miss Lambert (whom she loves and admires) walk past. Most of the girls mock Miss Lambert behind her back. When Jinny’s match concludes, she throws herself down on the grass, panting in exhaustion. As the hammering in her heart subsides, she comes back into her mind, resting in her growing desire to be loved and courted by a man.
Themes
One afternoon, most of the boys—including Percival—go off to play cricket, leaving Louis, Neville, and Bernard behind. Louis both admires and hates the gang of boys who play cricket and lead the school’s clubs. He wants to be accepted as part of their crowd and to share their power and authority, but he’s all too aware of their meanness and violence against the younger boys.
Themes
Neville has no interest in sports. For that perceived sin, Percival despises him, much to his distress. He loves Percival desperately yet knows they are ill-suited to each other. At the moment, Percival seems to understand poetry—at least, better than Louis does—but Neville knows that Percival is exceptional now mostly because he is young. As he ages, he will become ordinary.
Themes
Bernard would have gone to play cricket, had he been ready in time, but he’s always distracted by the stories that bubble in his mind. Now, he starts to tell Neville one about Dr. Crane going to his rooms at the end of the day. He describes the headmaster taking off his shoes, emptying the change from his pockets, and sinking into a chair. Dr. Crane sees the “pink bridge” of light beckoning from the bedroom door, beyond which Mrs. Crane lies in bed, reading. But instead of crossing it, Dr. Crane wonders how he ended up as a school headmaster rather than an admiral or a judge. Bernard abandons Dr. Crane in his chair, unable to bring himself to finish the story.
Themes
Neville likes Bernard’s stories but finds this tendency to let them trail off irritating. He wishes he could tell one of his friends about his feelings for Percival, but Bernard might then turn him into a character in a story, and Louis is too unemotional and intellectual to understand. Neville longs for someone to share things with. He has flashes of mystical vision, and the natural world no longer fulfils him as it once did.
Themes
Now it’s late July, just over a week before the end of the term. Susan cannot wait for these last eight days to pass, to get on the train, and to go home. She thinks about how lovely it will be to embrace her father, to wake up in her own bed and to go for an early-morning walk, and to be surrounded by her own things once more.
Themes
Jinny doesn’t care about going home like Susan does, but she does look forward to the end of her schooling, when she will become a woman and will attend parties and find love. She hates the blank, empty spaces of nighttime and wishes that life were one eternal day.
Themes
In contrast, Rhoda likes nighttime, when she can imagine and dream without getting caught by anyone, because she sometimes finds herself acting out her fantasies. She wishes to live in her fantasy world and to draw on its power to make the world more beautiful and luxurious.
Themes
Now it’s the end of school. On their graduation day, Dr. Crane presents Louis, Neville, Bernard, Percival, and the other boys with books of poetry. Louis’s respect for the headmaster has not waned, and he finds Dr. Crane’s parting words very moving. He feels grateful to have participated in the glorious tradition of education. Bernard knows that he’s in the midst of a momentous change but can only bring himself to notice tiny, discrete details about the day, like the bee buzzing around Dr. Crane and his honored guests. The end of school makes Neville sad because it means his separation from Percival, whom he still loves with abject devotion. He imagines sending Percival letters and invitations to meet only to be ignored.
Themes
Susan wakes up excited on the last day of school, but she knows it won’t truly feel like the summer holidays until she descends from the train at home that evening. She swears to herself that she’ll never live in London or send her own children to school, because being away from the gentle countryside of her home has been so painful to her. London is composed of too many hard surfaces, too much shine and polish. It’s a proper place for Jinny, but not for her.
Themes
On the northbound train home, Jinny rejoices in her freedom, too. She looks at the world flashing past the window and—when the train enters a tunnel, and the windows turn temporarily into mirrors—at the other passengers in the car. One, a man, lowers his paper and smiles at her reflection. This gives her a visceral, almost orgasmic thrill. But she withdraws into herself when she remembers that other people are watching her.
Themes
Rhoda sees the world in a metaphorical and poetic way. As she sits on the train, she feels life welling up in her once more like a wave in the ocean with the strength and suddenness of a tiger pouncing. She looks at the countryside passing by outside the window and thinks about the silence that closes in behind the train after it passes.
Themes
On the boys’ train, Louis knows that his fate diverges from the rest: Neville, Bernard, Percival, and his other friends are college-bound whereas he must now work for his living. He imagines their privileged lives in contrast to his, “behind a counter,” where he anticipates he will grow envious and bitter. But for the moment, he feels no resentment.
Themes
Bernard watches Louis and Neville, each absorbed in his own thoughts, with jealousy. He struggles to be self-reflective and is instead driven to strike up conversations with others, like Walter J. Trumble, a successful tradesman in their train car. In talking to Walter, Bernard feels the oneness of humanity. He gets so lost in the conversation, he almost misses his stop and loses track of his ticket.
The train stops and Bernard exits. Neville and Louis watch him grow small on the platform as their train pulls away. Neville wonders what Bernard thought about Trumble, or if Trumble just became, like everything else seems to, an element in Bernard’s never-ending, compulsive storytelling. Neville pretends to read a book of poetry, but he is lost in thought. He wonders how his life will turn out. He suspects he will end up as an “unhappy poet” and college professor. As the train draws near to London, the “centre of the civilized world,” he feels excited and a little lost. His life is just beginning.
Themes
