The Waves, Bernard Flashcards
‘Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda…’
‘Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda. With them I am many sided. They retrieve me from darkness’
‘Our names printed in white letters on our boxes proclaimed to the world that we were going to school…’
‘Our names printed in white letters on our boxes proclaimed to the world that we were going to school with the regulation number of socks and drawers… a second severance from the body of our mother’
- ‘names printed in white letters’ ‘regulation number of socks and drawers’
- ‘second severance from the body of our mothers’ the groups separation is associated with ‘severing’ the bond between a child and their mother
‘There is a red carnation in that case. A single flower as we sat here…’
‘There is a red carnation in that case. A single flower as we sat here waiting, but now a seven sided flower… a whole flower to which every eye brings its own contribution’
‘A whole flower to which every eye brings its own contribution’
‘Nor do I know if I am man or woman, Bernard or Neville…’
‘Nor do I know if I am man or woman, Bernard or Neville, Louis, Susan, Jinny or Rhoda - so strange is the nature of one with another’
‘This is the eternal renewal…’
‘This is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and rise again’
‘I have been talking of Bernard, Neville…’
‘I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct?’
‘How tired I am of stories… how I distrust…’
‘How tired I am of stories… how I distrust the neat designs of life that are drawn upon sheets of notepaper… what delights me is the confusion, the height, the indifference, and the fury’
As Bernard begins his ‘summing up’ he outlines his ‘distrust’ for stories. He criticises literature for trying to squeeze life into a predetermined shape or form, and believes the meaning of life belongs to what is left out of stories, what is unsaid, the fleeting moments and myriad impressions which can’t be captured through language
‘Of story, of design…’
‘Of story, of design, I do not see a trace then’
What is Bernard seemingly obsessed with?
‘Making phrases’
‘I must make phrases and phrases…’
‘I must make phrases and phrases and so interpose something hard between myself and the stare of housemaids, the stare of clocks, staring faces, or I shall cry’ p.17
Very begging of section two,
Bernard feels a necessity to use phrases in order order his reality and control emotion. He seems to contextualise language as the mediator between himself and external reality
‘I am eternally engaged of finding…’
‘I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this very moment’
VERY END OF SECTION 2
P.40
End of section 2
