Function of storytelling acts in Virginia Woolf's The Waves

This paper explores the politics of storytelling in Virginia Woolf's The Waves to show how stories and acts of storytelling push back against the characters' absurd and receding sense of annihilation. Storytelling in The Waves is presented as a unifying narrative element as well as a meaning-giving tool. Despite their vanishing sense of identity and disintegrating relationships, the six narrator-characters in The Waves desire to maintain their connection to their environment through the narrativization act of their experiences. Storytelling, in particular, helps Bernard to battle the annihilating force of death. His acts of storytelling not only foster a sense of connection among individuals and with their environment but also safeguard the preservation of their identities. By narrating everyday moments early on and recalling memories later, Bernard attempts to impose a cohesive structure on his identity, despite its inherent fragmentation and instability.