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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Tom Crick tell his students is the difference between animals and humans?

2. How old is Sarah Atkinson when she dies?

3. After Freddie's death, Mary reacts in a drastic way. What does she do?

4. What does Dick do when he finds the bottle?

5. Tom Crick mentions a similarity his father found between his home and the battlefields of World War I. What is that similarity?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 38, Tom describes the death of his mother from the flu. What is most remarkable about it to him?

2. In chapter 35, Tom Crick returns home from a day of teaching to find Mary has done what?

3. In chapter 2, a student called Price interrupts Tom Crick, the history teacher, to tell him what about history?

4. In chapter 43, Tom Crick parts from Price shouting "don't let him do it!" What is he referring to and what theme that has run through the novel is this a culmination of?

5. In chapter 32, Tom Crick describes the relationship between Mary and Dick. Why does Mary say she wants to "educate" Dick and what is the version of events that she tells Tom?

6. In chapter 7, Tom describes the complicated relationship between Mary, Tom, Freddie Parr, and Dick. Briefly discuss the main dynamics of this relationship.

7. in chapter 44, Tom Crick and his wife Mary return the baby Mary stole to the Safeways store where she found it. What are Tom's fears as they approach the mother of the child and how does the mother react?

8. in chapter 15, Tom Crick gives a history of the River Ouse and the Fenlands in its river valley. List at least three details from the river's history.

9. In chapter 34, Mary's experiment to teach Dick about love ends abruptly. How?

10. In chapter 29, Tom comes up with a way to test whether Dick killed Freddie Parr. What does he do to provoke a reaction from Dick? What reaction does he get?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Carefully consider the character Dick Crick in Graham Swift's novel Waterland. Trace what the reader learns about Dick as the story progresses that explains Dick's personality, actions, and passions. Finally, analyze what Dick's life might symbolize in Tom Crick's narrative about the Fens and its people.

Essay Topic 2

Graham Swift's novel Waterland features four strong women characters--Sarah Atkinson, Helen Atkinson Crick, Mary Metcalf Crick, and Martha Clay. However, all of them appear to struggle with serious psychological disorders or some form of madness. What are those disorders for each of them? What appear to be their causes? How do their disorders impact the story? What is the supernatural aspect that interacts with the madness of each of them? Finally, analyze what Swift may be trying to express about the nature of women portraying all the major female characters in Waterland in this way.

Essay Topic 3

Graham Swift's novel Waterland is set in the fictional town on Gildsey and along a fictional river, the River Leem. The Fenlands, the River Ouse, the town of Ely, and many other details are, however, real. In a sense, that fact is symbolic for how the novel treats the relationship between history and story. Using specifics and quotes from the novel, explore the relationship between fact and fiction in the novel. Make sure to include Tom Crick's opinions about history in your discussion.

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