Henningfeld is an Associate Professor at Adrian College and holds a Ph.D. in literature. She has written widely on literary topics for academic and educational publications. In the following essay, she argues that "The Wave" reveals O'Flaherty's understanding of the forces of nature and that its inclusion in the collection Spring Sowing serves to undercut notions of birth and rebirth suggested by the collection's title.

Liam O'Flaherty's short story, "The Wave," first appeared in 1924 as one of the stories in the collection Spring Sowing. The story later appeared in a 1937 collection, The Short Stories, as well as in the 1970 compilation, Selected Short Stories. Because of its frequent inclusion in anthologies, "The Wave" draws increasingly close attention from students and scholars alike. Its importance to the body of O'Flaherty's work is perhaps best illustrated by the appearance in 1980 of a collection called The Wave and Other Stories...