My Life With the Wave

Like the wave, the fish are both a character and a symbol in the story. When the wave becomes lonely, the narrator brings her gifts from the sea to console her. Among them is a school of fish; the lovers have either left or neglected all the other relationships in their lives, and the fish are an attempt to bring the wave company, something familiar from her previous life in the sea. The narrator’s plan backfires, however, as the wave then devotes all her time to them, and they effectively become her new love interests. The narrator jealously watches them “caressing her breasts, sleeping between her legs, adorning her hair with little flashes of color” (31). These fish are a symbolic threat to the narrator’s relationship with the wave, evident in the way he perceives them: A few are “particularly repulsive and ferocious,” with “jagged and bloodthirsty mouths” (31). Overcome with jealousy, the narrator tries to attack them, but they slip away and remain with the wave until the narrator finally leaves, maliciously laughing at him when he does (32). The fish are not mentioned at the end of the story once the wave has turned to ice; it is not known what happened to them, but they are no longer a threat to the narrator because the relationship has ended.

Among the rich imagery Paz utilizes to personify the wave, he employs a motif of cosmic elements to invoke how vast and unknown the wave is to the narrator. The wave is “infinite as the horizon” (30), and her “sensibility” spreads in eccentric ripples that “touch other galaxies” (30). The narrator feels that “to love her was to extend to remote contacts, to vibrate with far-off stars we never suspect” (30). To him, this love is otherworldly, as incomprehensible as the universe. The narrator believes she has no emotional core or “center,” “just an emptiness like a whirlwind that sucked me in and smothered me” (30), just as a black hole would. This kind of cosmic love is beautiful but also dangerous. Even outside the sea, the wave is affected by the moon—a blurring of the line between scientific fact and this surrealist world. These cosmic pulls not only change her tides, but also drastically affect her moods and appearance. While the narrator first finds this phenomenon “fantastic,” he soon learns how “fatal” this unpredictability is for their relationship.