The Waves Chapter 2a Summary

  • As in the first chapter, we get an intro that focuses purely on a physical landscape. If the settings described here have any relationship to the narrators, the link is not explained. This is Modernism, duders: EIY (explain it yourself).
  • Things seem to be picking up where the first chapter intro left off. The sun is rising higher in the sky, and water is sweeping up on the beach.
  • In the garden, there are stripes of shadow on the grass, which the early morning dew makes sparkle "like a mosaic of single sparks not yet formed into one whole" (2a.2).
  • More sun is also reaching the house, illuminating the objects within. A flower's petals fall open in response to the light, shaking like bells as their innards beat against the petals.
  • The light makes everything appear "amorphous"; the china of a plate appears to "flow," and the knife is like liquid (2a.3).
  • Simultaneously, the "muffled" waves are breaking on the shore (2a.3).