Multi-Perspectival Technique Manifested Through Bernard’s and Neville’s Points of View in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

In The Waves, Bernard always leads the discussion and tells the story of all six friends. Neville, not fully persuaded by Bernard’s narration, often follows Bernard’s remarks with a slight mockery of Bernard’s narration: “Let Bernard begin. Let him burble on, telling us stories. Let him describe what we have all seen so that it becomes a sequence” (Woolf 36). The tension between Bernard and Neville emerges from each of their firm belief in contrasting ways of narration: Bernard mainly dedicates his narration to depicting the universality of human nature with his “sympathetic understanding” (51), while Neville focuses on his need for individual emotional exclusiveness as expressed through his attention to Bernard and Percival. Woolf’s multi-perspectival technique, however, allows the reader to see Bernard from Neville’s point of view and Neville from Bernard’s.