Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the way in which the elements of nature become living creatures in "The Wave."

Short story writer and novelist Liam O'Flaherty was born on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, and this geographic fact may be the most significant factor in his writing, for his work reflects the wildness and instability of life on these isolated, storm-battered islands. Although O'Flaherty first began to work seriously on his writing in the years following World War I, while in the United States and London, he acknowledged in an autobiographical note that these efforts were not very good, and he burnt them. His work took an abrupt turn after 1923, however, when he returned to his homeland, Inishmore on Aran. The...