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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 was Freddie Parr's father, Jack Parr, infamous for in the Gildsey area?

2. What game are Tom Crick, Freddie Parr, Peter Baine, and Terry Coe playing with Mary Metcalf and Shirley Alford on the banks of the Hockwell Lode as Dick Crick looks on?

3. During the festivities for the newly crowned King George V, the New Atkinson Brewery is destroyed. How?

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

5. What is Tom Crick's response to this revelation?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 13, Tom Crick uses a pun on the word "histrionics" to explain his feelings. What is that pun and what is its significance?

2. In chapter 8, Tom Crick speaks about how humans tell stories. What are some examples he uses about how history and fiction sometimes seem to overlap?

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

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 14, Tom Crick's student Price asks him whether Tom thinks "we can find whatever we like in history." What it Tom's reply?

6. 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?

7. In chapter 6, Tom Crick suggests that the Fens and history have what in common?

8. 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?

9. In chapter 17, tells a version of the love story between Harry Crick and Helen Atkinson. How did they meet?

10. At the end of chapter 45, Tom and Dick have a conversation about Mary and her baby. What is the one thing Dick confesses to Harry, and what are the two things Tom tells Dick?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Sexual relationships and their consequences are central to Graham Swift's novel Waterland. Choose one of those relationships between the characters and their sexuality. Explore why the characters express their sexuality as they do. Explain the consequences these choices have for each of them and for their partners. Analyze in how far their sexual development is tied to external factors--such as social pressure--over which they have no control, and in how far it is their own choices that lead to the consequences that they have to face.

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

Analyze Tom's opinions about history and fate and explain how they relate to the relationship between the parents and children he has woven into his narrative. What might the symbolic meaning be of the fact that he and Mary cannot have a child of their own, and the only way for them to have something similar is for Mary to steal an infant and for Tom to claim Price as his son in the pub?

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