Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"
    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"
    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"
    Ebook34 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535842457
    A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Redux: The Virgin Suicides

      Oct 23, 2018

      Redux: The Virgin Suicides
      2 min read

    • Article

      Transfiguration(s)

      Jun 11, 2019

      Transfiguration(s)
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mohsin Hamid: “Migration is the Starting Point for Everybody”

      Mar 17, 2017

      This interview comes from Open Source, a weekly program about arts, ideas and politics. Listen to rest of the conversation here, including Mohsin Hamid reading passages from Exit West.   Make room for Mohsin Hamid on the long shelf of Indian and Pa

      15 min read

    • Article

      Shakespeare Through The Ages

      Apr 15, 2021

      In 1623, the playwright and poet Ben Jonson wrote that his friend Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time”. But Jonson could scarcely have imagined the impact and influence Shakespeare would have on four centuries of thinkers, writers, compo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Deconstructing Myths And Male Influence In ‘Fruit Of The Drunken Tree’

      Jul 31, 2018

      When I was a child growing up in Guatemala during the Civil War, my mom took me to play at my friend’s house late one night. She told me not to ask any questions. “Just play,” she said. While our mothers sat downstairs talking in hushed voices, my fr

      5 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Nov 25, 2021

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      May 13, 2021

      Encounters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    • Article

      Drama Series To Watch At Home

      Aug 6, 2020

      This series immerses viewers in New York’s 1980s underground ball scene, in which queer people performed in a range of competitive categories in the hope of snagging trophies. Social issues abound, from LGBTQ identity and the Aids crisis to the chall

      2 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 9, 2019

      Summer Reads
      8 min read

    • Article

      Previews

      Nov 10, 2019

      Previews
      3 min read

    • Article

      Your Telly Pick Of The Week

      May 13, 2021

      Your Telly Pick Of The Week
      2 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Nov 27, 2019

      THE Reading room
      7 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      Jun 10, 2022

      by Bernard O’Connor Nearly 40 female agents were sent out by the French section of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. The youngest was 19 and the oldest 53. Most were trained in paramilitary warfare, fieldcraft

      4 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading

      Jan 1, 2020

      A wealthy bibliophile brings a treasured manuscript to her Paris binder. The pages are creased, yellowed and pungent with the nutty aroma “that old paper exhales as it decays”, and underneath the title is a jumble of figures. The book is broken up in

      7 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Sep 3, 2020

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Sep 21, 2021

      Reviews
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Mar 1, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      Jul 9, 2020

      Encounters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tricks Of The Trade

      Jan 16, 2022

      Tricks Of The Trade
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lifting The Veil

      Dec 12, 2021

      Lifting The Veil
      2 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Jul 9, 2020

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      4 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Sep 30, 2021

      Thank you for the recent feature on Sir Walter Scott (The Man Who Invented Scotland?, September). For many of us, the way into history has been through the door marked “literature”, and so we welcome the obvious connections between the two discipline

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Sail Or Who Disappeared

      Jun 25, 2023

      The Sail Or Who Disappeared
      5 min read

    • Article

      This Weekend

      May 18, 2020

      Now more than ever you have the perfect excuse to stay indoors, so take advantage of your isolation and catch up on your burgeoning list in Netflix… From the comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez comes the story of three siblings and their mother,

      5 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Dec 2, 2021

      Book Film TV Podcast Games Other A riveting medieval ‘Me Too’ story Certificate: 18 Director: Ridley Scott Cast: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer Released: Out now On 29 December 1386, in a frosty field on the outskirts of northern Paris, the las

      6 min read

    • Article

      Best Of Bing E TV

      Mar 29, 2020

      Starring Steve Buscemi and featuring a jazzy soundtrack, this gritty Prohibition-era drama follows a politician who meddles in local affairs, bootlegging and other criminal activities. Julia Roberts stars in this psychological thriller about a woma

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland" - Gale

      1

      Waterland

      Graham Swift

      1983

      Introduction

      British novelist Graham Swift's Waterland (London, 1983; New York, 1984) is a complex tale set in eastern England's low-lying fens region. It is narrated by Tom Crick, a middle-aged history teacher. Tom is facing a personal crisis, since he is about to be laid off from his job and his wife has been admitted to a mental hospital. He is a man who is keenly interested in ideas about the nature and purpose of history. Faced with a class of bored and rebellious students, he scraps the traditional history curriculum and tells them stories of the fens instead. These stories form the substance of the novel, which takes place mainly in two time frames: the present, and the year 1943, when Tom Crick is fifteen years old. The traumatic events of his adolescence reach forward in time to influence the present. The structure of the novel, which frequently moves back and forth in time, also suggests the fluidity of the interaction between past and present.

      Tom's tale of the fens is sometimes lurid. It includes a family history going back to the eighteenth century and such lurid topics as murder, suicide, abortion, incest, and madness. These events are set against a background of some of the great events in history, such as World War I and World War II. The novel also includes digressions on such off-beat topics as the sex life of the eel, the history of land reclamation, the history of the River Ouse, and the nature of phlegm. At once a philosophical meditation on the meaning of history and a gothic family saga, Waterland is a tightly interwoven novel that entertains as it provokes.

      Author Biography

      Graham (Colin) Swift was born May 4, 1949, in London, England, the son of Allan Stanley and Sheila Irene (Bourne) Swift. His father was a civil servant. Swift attended Dulwich College, in South London, from 1960 to 1967. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1970 from Queens' College, Cambridge,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1