Opening Paragraph
Woolf is fond of opening her stories and books (or chapters within books) with metaphorical language. Many writers shy away from this strategy for a number of various reasons, but Woolf is pretty vigorous in using the power of the metaphor to commence things:
“The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.”
The Lights of London
London is given a special character in the novel, situated more as a real place in contrast to the dreamlike worlds elsewhere. Many critics have noted that The Waves offers Woolf’s most entrancing portrait of the capital city as a place almost alive with energy and potential. The following metaphorically rich passage is a strong sample of what these critics may be talking about:
“And so back to London in the evening….the good-nights and see you tomorrows of friends parting at wayside stations, and then the lights of London — not the flaring ecstasy of youth, not that tattered violet banner, but still the lights of London all the same; hard, electric lights, high up in offices; street lamps laced along dry pavements; flares roaring above street markets.”
Bernard and Byron; Byron and Bernard
The character of Bernard—like so many young British men of the time—develops a strong identification with arguably England’s most romantic of the Romantic poets, Lord Byron. Over time this identification begins to fade as the narrative takes up for consideration the theme of identity. Just how strong Bernard’s identification as a young man is put in a solidly Byronesque terms by Bernard himself:
“I was Byron, and the tree was Byron’s tree, lachrymose, down- showering, lamenting.”
The Banker's Son
In another example of how suggestively Woolf uses the power of metaphor to delineate character, Louis—the overly assertive and deceptively self-assured son of a rich banker—outlines his plans for a future that seems fairly solidly laid out in his youth:
“My shoulder is to the wheel; I roll the dark before me, spreading commerce where there was chaos in the far parts of the world.”
The Waves
“The waves” appear in metaphorical terms throughout the book, taking on myriad meanings through individual context. For instance:
“My children will carry me on...like the waves of the sea under me.”
“Then another cloud was caught in the light and another and another, so that the waves beneath were arrow-struck with fiery feathered darts that shot erratically across the quivering blue.”
“The world is beginning to move past me like the banks of a hedge when the train starts, like the waves of the sea when a steamer moves.”
But, by far, the most memorably poetic imagery conveyed through the use of waves as metaphor has go to be the following example. So richly constructed is this sentence that it really doesn't matter whether the meaning is clear or not (especially since it's probably not to most people); Woolf seems to merely to be inviting the reader into its sumptuous demonstration of art of prose.
“The waves drummed on the shore, like turbaned warriors, like turbaned men with poisoned assegais who, whirling their arms on high, advance upon the feeding flocks, the white sheep.”
