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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 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?

2. What medical condition is Tom afraid that Mary might have?

3. What is the motto of the New Brewery in Gildsey?

4. What does Ernest Atkinson do that marks the first step in his family's economic decline?

5. What is the worst thing Tom Crick can imagine?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 20, Price tells Tom Crick that he thinks "explaining's a way of avoiding the facts while you pretend to get near them." Why does Price think he does not need to have explanations for history?

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. Chapter 49 is one more chapter Tom Crick spends lamenting what happens when idealists begin revolutions and lose sight of their ideals. What is that example?

4. In chapter 5, what does Tom notice about Freddie Parr's face, and what does he conclude from it?

5. 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.

6. At the end of chapter 47, Tom says that "we all come to out asylums." Where is he when he says this and what does he mean?

7. What is the significance of phlegm for the body according to chapter 51?

8. In chapter 50, Harry Crick is bed-ridden in Tom's and Mary's first house in Gildsey. What made him ill?

9. Chapter 36 is titled "About Nothing." What is the "nothing" that Tom refers to?

10. As he watches Dick ride off on his motorbike at the end of chapter 46, Tom states that Dick rides as if he has the legacy of the Atkinsons on his back. How so?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Graham Swift's novel Waterland, one major theme is that of being truthful--both towards oneself and towards others. The narrator, Tom, is the best example for that struggle. Give an example from Tom's story (or from his story-telling) of instances when telling the truth matters very much, but either Tom or the reader cannot tell whether the truth is being told. Explore what difference it would have made in that instance if the truth had been told.

Essay Topic 2

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 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.

(see the answer keys)

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