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Waterland

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Clare, John, John Clare: Selected Poetry and Prose, edited by Merryn and Raymond Williams, Methuen, 1986, pp. 150-53.

Kennedy, Maev (10 March 2009). "Graham Swift joins angling partner Ted Hughes in British Library archive". The Guardian . Retrieved 10 March 2009.Tom has reached a crisis aged 52. It looks as though he is about to be made redundant as his history post is being replaced by General Studies. His wife of thirty years has snatched a baby. He resorts to teaching history to his class by teaching them his own history: I enjoyed the slow, circular process of reading Waterland. I especially savored the parallel structure and imagery embedded in the prose. The novel's protagonist and storyteller is a history teacher. Swift's method of using the teacher's lessons to tell the stories in the book gives the novel a sense of breaking down the fourth wall. Higdon, David Leon, "Double Closures in Postmodern British Fiction: The Example of Graham Swift," in Critical Survey, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1991, pp. 88-95. Higdon analyzes Swift's use of closure (that is, how he ends his novels) in Waterland and other works. He concludes that Swift synthesizes traditional endings with a postmodernist open-endedness. There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.” The students in Tom’s school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, Lewis Scott, himself a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom’s subject, a fact that he in no way masks. One of Tom’s students, Price, an intelligent sixteen-year-old whose father is a mechanic, presses Tom with questions about the relevance of learning about such historical events as the French Revolution. The youth’s skepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach from one of presenting historical facts to one that involves his telling tales drawn from his own recollection. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy.

Abortion is legal if performed in the first twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy. This law was established by the 1967 Abortion Act. Family and Relationships: The novel delves into the complex relationships between family members, including the dynamics of power, violence, and betrayal. Tom's reflections on his family's past reveal the hidden tensions and secrets that have shaped their relationships over time. Metafiction refers to when a text makes the reader aware that they are reading a fictional text. It is self-referential. The story might examine the very means of storytelling itself. Tomorrow (2007) once again adopted a South London setting and an intense interior monologue to unravel a saga of family secrets at the moments before their imminent revelation. This time, the internal voice was that of 49-year old Paula, speaking as if to the teenage children asleep in the next room. With her husband asleep by her side, the novel relied on the tension of what the coming ‘tomorrow’ of the title would bring for the family. How would family secrets be revealed and how would the secrets be disclosed? Hollinghurst, Alan, "Of Time and the River," in Times Literary Supplement, October 7, 1983, p. 1073.

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This is the bare frame of a story that becomes extremely complicated and convoluted. Tom uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to unfold an extremely interesting story to his students. The bulk of Waterland is devoted to this story that, before it is done, covers some three hundred years of local history and relates it to the broader historical currents of those three centuries. Tom even makes occasional brief excursions to Anglo-Saxon times in telling his tales. I'm not kidding. This book gets a little ridiculous. It's a semi-Postmodern text examining the difficulty of writing Realism in a Postmodern era, but it goes off on romantic (not Romantic) tangents about natural history and cultural history and all, in a very Julian Barnes ( A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters) way. Then it goes into creepy, Stephen King-esque scenes with the children exploring the two great draws in life: sex and death. (The only constants, heh.) I ended up wishing either Stephen King or Julian Barnes had written it, and focused on it - as it is, the tension is uneasy, and yet uneasy in a way that really contributes to the novel and its aims. Although I do love how the idea of storytelling is played with in this novel: the idea that we can't bear reality without the stories we create to endow it with meaning, because otherwise reality is too strong, too harsh, and will overpower us. But again, that's very Barnes. Mary also experiences significant losses in Waterland. These happen when she is a young woman but impact the rest of her life and the lives of those around her. Mary's botched abortion results in her losing the ability to ever have children. As she gets older, it becomes clear that she desperately wants children. Her infertility drastically affects her mental health to the point in which she is unstable enough to steal a baby. Not only does she lose the ability to have children, Mary gradually loses her mind throughout Waterland too.

Waterland is a 1983 novel by Graham Swift, set in the Fenland of eastern England. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress, it doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-endingly retrieving what is lost. A dogged, vigilant busi-ness. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.’ Tarihin dikkate değer tek yönü, bence efendim muhtemelen sona ermek üzere olduğu noktaya gelmiş olması.” Pradėjus skaityti galvojau "kaip žmogus gali taip gerai rašyti?". Ir iki šiol tas jausmas liko. Ši istorija - tai dėlionė akylam ir neskubančiam skaitytojui. Ji supinta iš subtilių užuominų, kurios viena po kitos atskleidžiamos ir po truputį dedamos į savas vietas parodo pilną vaizdą. Aš joje tiesiog mėgavausi. Pasakojimo stiliumi, pasirinktomis temomis, magijos ir pasakos priemaišomis, istorija ir beprotybe, pelkėmis, vandenimis ir jų žmonėmis. 💛 Masculinity and Identity: The novel explores themes of masculinity and identity, particularly through the character of Tom, who struggles to come to terms with his own sense of self and place in the world. The novel also examines the ways in which societal expectations of masculinity can lead to violence and aggression.Is history simply a record of past mistakes? How do religious beliefs fit into the picture? Can knowledge of past events make us better people? With knowledge can we make better decisions? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Life without curiosity is a dead end. If you have curiosity, how can one stop asking why, why, why as life unrolls? If you are a person who incessantly asks why, the need for history is a given. History and Memory: The novel reflects on the power of storytelling and memory in constructing personal and collective histories. Tom's reflections on his family's past and the history of the Fens demonstrate the role of storytelling in shaping our understanding of the world around us. The headmaster has no sympathy for Tom’s new approach, even though it rekindles student interest in history. The headmaster tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement at a decent pension. Tom resists because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and history would simply be combined with the broader area of General Studies. The first attempts to drain the fens were made by the ancient Romans. In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I also wished to undertake the project to improve the region's agricultural yields. But it was not until the seventeenth century that drainage of the fens took place on a large scale. This was a massive engineering project that caused enormous ecological changes in the region and took several decades to accomplish. The impetus came from the Duke of Bedford and wealthy investors in London who wished to increase the value of the land they owned, which they could then sell at a profit. Swift was acquainted with Ted Hughes [4] and has himself published poetry, some of which is included in Making an Elephant: Writing from Within (2009).

As critics and reviewers have pointed out there are similarities with Great Expectations and Absalom, Absalom: post-modern retellings which question narrative itself. Of course the material of the stories refuses to be shaped by them. There’s a great deal of water (this is the Fens!) and lots of water related motifs and symbols. It also fairly deftly jumps between the quaint and the macabre. This is an amalgam of lots of ideas which actually works rather well. And don’t forget the eels!

Waterland - Key takeaways

Graham Swift is the author of Waterland. He was born in 1949 and had a relatively comfortable childhood. Swift became a Cambridge graduate in 1970 with a degree in English. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. The headmaster, Lewis, tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement. Tom resists this because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and would be combined with the broader area of General Studies. Tom's wife is arrested for snatching a baby. The publicity that attends her arrest reflects badly on the school, and Tom is told that he now must retire. In response, he uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to recount a story to his students. The pivot of Waterland focuses on both the past in 1943, and the present time thirty years after – all related through the eyes of Tom as an adolescent.

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