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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 Dick do when he finds the bottle?

2. Whom does Tom Crick quote as saying, "we cannot step into the same river twice?"

3. What did Johannes Schmidt conclude about the difference between the European eel and the American eel?

4. What is the main fish that the Cricks and their neighbors catch for food?

5. What does Tom Crick's new-coined term "histrionics" refer to?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who does the chapter title "The Saviour of the World" refer to, and what does it mean?

2. In chapter 45, what is the symbolic significance of where Dick elected to hide the key from Tom to their mother's chest?

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

4. In chapter 27, Tom Crick explains what he means by Natural History. What does he think it is a study of, truly?

5. In chapter 10, Tom Crick explains that he thinks the most important question is the question "why?" How does he use Louis XVI's fate to illustrate that point?

6. In chapter 28, Tom explains why he turned to history and stories as passionately as he did. Why is that?

7. Briefly discuss how, in chapter 44, his interview with the police unravels Tom's earlier ideas about teaching the facts of history.

8. In chapter 23, Tom Crick asserts that the 14th of July festivities the French celebrate as Bastille Day are more of a fairy tale than anything else. What makes him say so?

9. In chapter 17, Tom Crick discusses his difficulties in trying to marry Mary Metcalf. What are the sources of those difficulties?

10. In chapter 24, Tom, Dick, Freddie Parr, Mary Metcalf, and a few other kids are playing together near the water. What is the importance of the eel to all the events that transpire afterwards?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Carefully consider the character of Ernest Atkinson in Graham Swift's novel Waterland. Trace the mistakes he makes that lead to his social, political, and financial decline in Gildsey and that cause catastrophe for his descendants. Finally, analyze what Ernest's life might symbolize in Tom Crick's narrative about the Fens and its people.

Essay Topic 2

Graham Swift's novel Waterland features several important symbols that recur over and over again--the phlegm-like soil, the chest in the attic and the hidden key, pikes and eels, Coronation Ale, the empty bottle Tom finds in the river, the ruined windmill, and so on. Choose two of those symbols, trace in detail how they are used throughout the novel to point to something beyond themselves, and discuss how and why they are important to understanding some of the deeper truths the novel is trying to convey.

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the novel Waterland, the narrator Tom Crick uses fairy-tale language like "once upon a time" and references to supernatural beings like ghosts and witches while he recounts history. Using specific examples from the novel, deduce why Tom Crick does so. Discuss why he feels justified in mixing history and fairy tales.

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