The Waves characters

Appears from the start

One of six speaking figures introduced in childhood. Bernard experiences life by turning it into phrases, stories, and imagined scenes, constantly inventing identities for himself and other people. Sociable and curious, he depends on an audience and already senses that no single account can contain a person for long.

Appears from the start

A boy whose precise attention to language and beauty is accompanied by strong private feeling. More solitary than Bernard and less willing to dissolve experience into easy stories, Neville seeks order, distinction, and a person worthy of his intense devotion.

Appears from the start

An Australian-born boy who feels marked by his accent and colonial background among the English children. Ambitious, observant, and self-conscious, Louis longs for acceptance and authority while privately cultivating a poetic sense of history and continuity.

Appears from the start

A girl whose strongest attachments are to nature, the countryside, and the immediate force of emotion. She reacts fiercely to affection and jealousy and imagines a life rooted in land, animals, household labor, and family rather than urban display.

Appears from the start

A girl who understands herself through movement, physical sensation, and the response she produces in others. Alert to glances, bodies, color, and social energy, Jinny inhabits the visible present more readily than the inward stories or abstractions favored by several of her companions.

Appears from the start

A solitary, imaginative girl who struggles to feel that she has a stable self among other people. She creates private worlds from objects and ritual, but ordinary social demands can make her feel exposed or unreal. Her sensitivity gives her perceptions unusual intensity while increasing her isolation.

First appears in chapter 2

A charismatic schoolmate who becomes the admired center of the group's imagination. Percival never receives a monologue of his own, so he is known through what the six speakers project onto his confidence, physical ease, and authority. Neville's devotion is especially intense, but all of them use Percival as an image of unity they cannot create alone.