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It is true that the effects of solvation in water are much stronger; but it is also true that the great reactivity of sodium and all alkali metals with protons are because of the great energy of the...

From the electronic point of view, just losing an electron would bring to sodium a noble gas structure. This justifies the fact commented by unknown008: the reaction is very exothermic.

I disagree, metallic bonding is not covalent-like, so I find that the usefulness of Lewis structures (really awesome when applied to molecules) is totally poor at describing the metallic behavior....