Themes (AQA A-Level English Literature A): Revision Notes
Themes
Graham Swift's Waterland is a richly thematic novel that explores fundamental questions about how we understand and make sense of our world. The novel weaves together multiple themes that challenge conventional ideas about history, progress, and human nature. Through the Fens landscape and the Crick family story, Swift examines the tension between cycles and linear progression, between human control and natural forces, and between storytelling and truth.
History and storytelling
One of the central concerns of Waterland is the relationship between history and storytelling. Tom Crick, the history teacher and narrator, presents a radical proposition that challenges traditional historical study. He suggests that history, herstory, and stories are essentially the same thing, questioning whether there's any meaningful difference between factual historical accounts and the narratives we construct about the past.
This theme directly confronts the ideas of Tom's headmaster, Lewis, who represents a utilitarian, fact-based approach to education. Lewis promotes the 'Science of Life', valuing measurable, scientific knowledge over the humanities. However, Tom argues that storytelling is not merely entertainment but an essential human activity - a way of making sense of our existence.
His repeated phrase, 'Children, it's all in the telling', emphasises that how we narrate events matters as much as the events themselves.
The novel employs the metafictional technique of drawing attention to its own narrative construction. This means the text openly acknowledges that it's a story being told, rather than pretending to be an objective account. Tom's approach embodies a Lyotardian incredulity toward metanarratives - that is, a postmodern scepticism about grand, overarching explanations of history that claim to be universally true.
The Waterwheel Metaphor
The metaphor of the waterwheel is particularly significant here. Unlike linear progress that moves forward in a straight line, the waterwheel moves in cycles, returning to the same position repeatedly. This cyclical movement challenges teleological views of history - the idea that history has a predetermined direction or purpose. Swift draws parallels between the French Revolution and the Jubilee celebrations, showing how historical patterns repeat rather than progress neatly forward.
Through the Crick family secrets and the revelation of hidden truths across generations, the novel demonstrates how personal narratives intersect with broader historical movements, showing that history is not just about grand events but about individual lives and the stories we tell about them.
Nature vs. human control
The Fens landscape serves as the primary site for exploring humanity's struggle to control nature. This marshy region of eastern England has been shaped by centuries of human intervention, particularly through drainage projects. The 17th-century drainage schemes initiated by Vermuyden, which included constructing windmills and dredgers, symbolise humanity's ambition to master the natural world and impose order upon chaos.
However, the novel repeatedly shows that this control is precarious and perhaps illusory. The land that has been reclaimed from marshes can easily flood again, returning to its watery state. This reflects Swift's broader questioning of whether human progress is genuine or merely temporary.
The environment in Waterland is not a passive backdrop but an active force that resists human attempts at mastery.
Eels as Natural Symbol
The eels function as a powerful symbol of nature's persistence and renewal. These creatures spawn eternally in the Sargasso Sea, representing cycles of life that continue regardless of human intervention. They mirror Tom Crick's own sense of cyclical existence and renewal, connecting the natural world to human experience. The eels suggest that beneath all human attempts at control, natural processes continue according to their own rhythms.
Mary Metcalf's mystical visions represent another form of resistance to rational control. Her encounters with what she perceives as spiritual or supernatural forces cannot be explained by logic or science. When she describes the 'Maniac Earth' that 'howls indifferently', she captures the idea that nature possesses its own agency and does not exist solely for human benefit or understanding.
The novel's exploration of environmental themes resonates with 1980s ecological concerns. Written during a period of growing environmental awareness, Waterland reflects anxieties about industrial progress and environmental degradation. The phrase about 'repeatedly retrieving what is lost' suggests an endless, perhaps futile, human effort to maintain control over forces larger than ourselves. This theme questions whether humanity's attempts to dominate nature ultimately lead to loss rather than gain.
Loss and trauma
Waterland presents loss and trauma as fundamental experiences that shape individual lives and family histories across generations. The Crick and Atkinson families are marked by a series of devastating events that create lasting psychological wounds and secrets that poison family relationships.
The Atkinson brewery fire stands as a pivotal traumatic event that sets in motion a chain of consequences. This disaster represents not just physical destruction but the beginning of the family's decline. Sarah Atkinson's descent into madness following the fire demonstrates how trauma can shatter the mind as well as material security. Her madness becomes part of the family inheritance, a psychological wound passed down through generations.
The Weight of Secrets
Family secrets and degeneration form a pattern throughout the novel. Dick's intellectual disability and his eventual suicide, Mary's sterility resulting from a botched abortion, and Freddie Parr's drowning all represent different forms of loss. These losses are compounded by the secrecy surrounding them - the hidden truth about Dick's paternity, the concealment of Mary's abortion, and the ambiguity about Freddie's death. The novel suggests that secrets create their own kind of trauma, as characters carry the burden of hidden knowledge.
Tom's position as a survivor shapes his entire worldview. He lives with guilt over Freddie's death and the destruction of his family, even as he tries to understand these events through storytelling. His survivor guilt manifests in his compulsive need to tell the story, to examine it from every angle, as if the act of narration might somehow make sense of the senseless losses he's experienced.
Mary's baby-snatching delusion represents the psychological impact of her abortion and sterility. Unable to have children, she attempts to steal one, showing how trauma can distort perception and drive desperate actions. This incident brings their past traumas into their present lives, demonstrating that such wounds never fully heal.
The presence of World War I orphans, particularly Henry, introduces historical trauma on a broader scale. The war's devastation creates orphans and broken families, showing how historical events produce personal tragedies. The novel draws connections between personal and collective trauma, suggesting they operate according to similar patterns.
Gothic Elements and the Return of the Repressed
Gothic elements pervade the novel's treatment of trauma. Freddie's corpse, which surfaces from the water, represents the return of the repressed - secrets and traumas that cannot stay buried. The Gothic tradition of the past haunting the present is central to Waterland's exploration of how trauma persists across time. The boundary between living and dead becomes blurred, as the dead continue to exert influence over the living through memory, guilt, and unresolved grief.
Sexuality and fertility
Sexuality in Waterland is presented as a powerful, often destructive force that intersects with themes of fertility, sterility, and the progression of human history. The novel treats sexual desire as something that cannot be easily controlled or rationalised, often leading to violence and tragedy.
The phallic symbolism of eels connects sexuality to nature's cycles of renewal. When Tom describes eels to his students, the sexual undertones are unmistakable, linking biological reproduction to human sexuality. The eels represent a kind of primitive, elemental fertility that exists beneath civilised society's surface.
Repressed sexual urges drive much of the novel's action. The relationship between Mary and Tom, which begins with their explorations at the Leaning Tower, represents awakening sexuality. However, this natural development is complicated by the darker sexual relationships in the novel. The revelation of Helen and Ernest Atkinson's incestuous relationship - which produces Dick - demonstrates how sexual transgression can have generational consequences. This incest parallels the hidden, shameful aspects of sexuality that Victorian and modern society attempts to suppress.
Mary's paternity lie about her pregnancy adds another layer of sexual complication. Her claim that Tom is the father, when it's actually Dick, sets in motion the tragic chain of events leading to her abortion and Freddie's death. The lie shows how sexuality intersects with power, deception, and violence. It also demonstrates the narrative containment of sexuality - how stories and lies are used to control or conceal sexual transgressions.
The theme of sterility as progress's cost is embodied in Mary's inability to have children following her abortion. The brewery's sterility, the Fens' aridity, and Mary's physical barrenness all suggest that modern progress comes at the price of fertility and renewal. The novel implies that as society becomes more 'advanced', it loses its capacity for regeneration and natural growth.
The contrast between Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic is explored through the Atkinsons and Cricks respectively. The Cricks' association with Protestant values of industry and rationality is complicated by their inability to confront the irrational, passionate aspects of human nature. The Catholic elements, particularly through Mary's religious visions and guilt, represent a different relationship to sexuality - one marked by sin, confession, and spiritual torment rather than rational control.
Progress and modernity's discontents
Waterland presents a sustained critique of the modern faith in progress, particularly as it manifested in 1980s Britain under Thatcherism. The novel questions whether humanity's supposed advancement actually represents improvement or merely different forms of loss and disillusionment.
The Thatcherite Challenge
The Thatcherite denial of history is embodied in Headmaster Lewis's dismissal of history as 'bunk'. This phrase, originally attributed to Henry Ford, captures a utilitarian, forward-looking ideology that sees the past as irrelevant to present concerns. Lewis's syllabus, which emphasises practical, scientific knowledge over humanities education, reflects the Thatcherite prioritisation of economic efficiency over cultural and historical understanding. Tom's resistance to this view forms the novel's central ideological conflict.
The novel contains elements of Enlightenment parody through its treatment of rational progress. The Atkinsons' Jubilee celebrations, meant to commemorate industrial and imperial achievement, are revealed as 'dogged, inglorious' rather than triumphant. This ironic treatment suggests that Enlightenment ideals of steady human improvement through reason and industry are at best misguided and at worst actively harmful. The phrase 'dogged, inglorious' captures the grim determination of modernity rather than its supposed glory.
Swift employs postmodern soliloquy - Tom's extended, fragmented narratives to his students - to mourn the loss of communal rituals and shared meanings. The erosion of communal rituals is evident in the disappearance of traditional ways of life in the Fens, replaced by modern rationalism and individualism. The novel suggests that modernity has stripped away the stories, traditions, and collective practices that gave life meaning, leaving individuals isolated and disconnected.
The concept of nuclear time appears through Price's reference to the 'end of time'. In the 1980s context of Cold War tensions, this represents not just personal anxiety but a collective fear that human progress has led to the means of total self-destruction. The possibility of nuclear annihilation makes all historical progress meaningless, as everything could end at any moment.
The novel's treatment of empire-building and the Atkinsons' brewery expansion parallels larger imperial projects. The 'dogged' reclamation of land from marsh mirrors British imperial expansion - both are presented as potentially futile attempts to impose order and extract profit from resistant territories. The inevitable decline of the Atkinson family business suggests that such projects of expansion and progress contain the seeds of their own collapse.
Key Points to Remember:
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History as storytelling: Tom Crick's central idea that 'history = herstory = stories' challenges the distinction between factual history and narrative, emphasising that how we tell the past matters as much as what happened.
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Cyclical vs. linear: The waterwheel symbolises cyclical history that repeats rather than progresses, directly opposing teleological views of inevitable advancement and challenging Thatcherite futurism.
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Nature resists control: Despite drainage and development, the Fens constantly threaten to flood again, while eels continue their eternal cycles, showing human control over nature is temporary and illusory.
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Trauma resurfaces: Like Freddie's corpse emerging from water, the novel demonstrates that secrets, losses, and past traumas cannot be permanently buried - they return to haunt the present through guilt, madness, and Gothic elements.
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Fertility and sterility: Mary's inability to have children, the brewery's decline, and the Fens' aridity all connect sterility to modern progress, suggesting advancement comes at the cost of natural regeneration and renewal.