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“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.��

From the very first line, Woolf throws her reader into six different minds; we see what they see, hear what they listen to and feel what they touch or are touched by. These six narrators show us glimpses of their childhood, their surroundings, their fears, their midlife, their loves, their ambitions, their failures, their sacrifices, their old age and lastly, their deaths. Somehow all these glimpses are stained by some sort of sadness; at times this stain is hardly recognizable and at times it is deep and dark to an extent that it might suffocate the reader.

But what can the reader do? One just have to witness these lives living, breathing, feeling, loving, wailing, contemplating and dying, as Woolf stitches them and their memories to the reader's mind by using her words as a needle and her poetical prose as a thread. The reader is forced to feel this pain and to suffer this suffocation of being alive. Now as a one single being, the reader looks at himself/herself but finds that self looking at these six different people; at times individually, at times everyone at once. They tell their stories, the reader listens. The reader questions, they answer. At times, they decide to remain silent but the reader gets the answer he/she was looking for. How wonderful! How magical! Just like a dream, waiting far away; fading slowly. It is yours and it is not. They are you and they are not.

As the reader would turn the last page of The Waves, he/she would find himself/herself similar to and yet distinguished from these characters. As the reader would turn the last page of The Waves, he/she would find that his/her heart's throbbing has been replaced by the music of the waves clashing the shore. One tries to relate to The Waves subconsciously, and each one is gifted with a different result. The Waves might not provide the right answers for everyone but it asks right questions; the questions about life and death, being and existence, reality and dreams, and most importantly, about you and I.