The Waves Literary Elements

Experimental novel consisting of a combination between prose and poetry.

It is hard to determine the setting where the action in the novel takes place. From the way the events are presented is seems as if the events are taking place during present time inside the rooms of every narrator.

The novel is told from the perspective of six distinctive narrators. Every narrator recalls the events from a first-person subjective perspective.

The tone used in the novel is a neutral one and a mocking one.

There are no antagonists and protagonists in the novel. The general impression is that each character is a protagonist but none has a clearly defined antagonist.

The major conflict is presented in the novel as being between reality and perception.

The novel reaches its climax when Percival dies.

From the first story, the reader gets the idea that what a character writes, in the beginning, is not necessarily the truth. This sends the trend of each character changing their stories drastically during their soliloquies. Thus, from the first story, the unstable nature of each story is foreshadowed.

At the beginning of her story, Susan claims that her beauty is a blessing which makes her life easier. As her story progresses, we find that this is an understatement and that, in fact, she resents the way in which no one is able to see past her beauty and see her as a real human being, capable of thinking in abstract terms.

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The most important imagery in the novel is that of Percival, the character who dies before the beginning of the novel. He is portrayed as a romantic hero, a young man who decided to fight for his country and enlist to serve in the navy. Nothing bad is ever said about Percival and the general idea is that he was a perfect man who died a tragic death while trying to do what he believed was right.

One paradoxical idea which we can find in the novel is the way in which none of the characters appear to be happy even though they live relatively privileged lives and do not have to deal with any type of hardship.

A parallel can be drawn between the major characters in the novel and the real friends the writer had. During a close examination, it is easy to notice some similarities between the fictional characters and the real-life people. For example, it is believed that the character of Percival was based on the author's brother.

The act of writing is used in the novel as a general way to make reference to superior intelligence and superior intellectual abilities.

We have a personification in Percival's story in the sentence "and the ship tried its best to remain afloat".