EARTH AND THE SELF

Just like human existence, the self is fragmented and multifaceted, deeply marked by an abrupt syntax of personalized internalization of reality. Woolf s The Waves becomes an alienated and alienating chronicle of the characters' self and, as claimed by many, of the writer's. The novel stands out as a labyrinthine reading, a challenge in the rapport writer - reader, an intellectual experiment aiming to weave the textual and thematic 'net' that keeps the sections of the novel together, as well as the fictional personae and the fragments of the self, oscillating between unity and diversity, either merging the characters into one and losing track of their individuality, or preserving the boundaries of the self/their own individuality. The present article focuses on the characters of Susan, Neville and Louis as representing the element of earth (Fand 55). Together with the other characters in the novel, they stand out as a web of identity lights and shadows, a voyage along the vertical and horizontal axis of the individual's inner universe.