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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 compare the sound of Dick's motorcycle to the evening Mary has broken up with Tom?

2. What is Henry Crick's occupation?

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

4. What does Tom Crick think the French really celebrate on Bastille Day when they mark the beginning of the French Revolution?

5. How does Freddie Parr's father Jack react to the ruling by the court that Freddie's death was an accident?

Short Essay Questions

1. In chapter 25, Tom Crick gauges the reaction of his students at his racy revelations. What does he observe about rebellion in this context?

2. In chapter 37, Tom Crick discusses the idea of terror and how it aids people in pretending they're changing the world for the better. What are some examples Tom gives from the French Revolution?

3. 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?

4. In chapter 33, Tom Crick takes Price to a bar to have a drink. What is the question Price asks Tom that shakes Tom the most?

5. In chapter 31, Price tells Tom Crick about the student club he is part of. What club is that and what is its purpose?

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

7. 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?

8. In chapter 48, what is the difficulty the headmaster runs into when he tries to announce Tom Cricks' retirement to the students at the school?

9. In chapter 42, a new-found confidante helps Mary to get something Mary wants. What is that?

10. 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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Unusual deaths and half-dead states haunt the characters of the novel Waterland by Graham Swift. Choose one character whose death or death-like state is traumatizing to the other characters, describe the circumstances of his or her death, and explore the death's lasting effects. Using specifics from the book, argue why those deaths were as important as they were. Analyze how death serves as a theme and as a symbol in the novel and what that theme or symbol implies for Tom Crick's view of history.

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Religion is not an overt topic in Graham Swift's novel Waterland, but it certainly recurs as a theme. In particular, Tom Crick discusses religion in respect to two women: Gildsey's patron saint Gunnhilda and Tom's wife Mary. Using specifics and quotes from the novel, retrace the religious development those two women undergo in the novel and compare and contrast them.

(see the answer keys)

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