Waterland

“‘And don’t forget,’ my father would say, […] ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk.’” 

In accepting the incestuous relationship between his father-in-law and his wife, and the result of that union—his severely mentally challenged stepson—Henry Crick finds the true meaning of unconditional love. He sees all people as part of the human race, all starting out as babies who, though they make mistakes or have defects, are love itself. Henry passes this sentiment on to his sons.

“Children. Children, who will inherit the world. Children (for always, even though you were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, candidates for that appeasing term ‘young adults,’ I addressed you, silently, as (‘children’) […] listen, one last time to your history teacher.” 

Tom Crick addresses the future children who will inherit the world, but he cannot let them forget the past or allow them to wipe out history as the school is wiping out his career of 32 years. Though children often repeat the same mistakes as past children, it is important to remember relevant and valuable stories.

“Cutting History? If you’re going to sack me, then sack me, don’t dismiss what I stand for. Don’t banish my history.” 

Tom Crick does not teach history—he lives history. It is his religion, his value system, his passion, his anchor on an ever-changing sea. Tom’s enthusiasm aspires to uphold what all teachers should—an entire commitment to their subject and to passing it on. Removing Tom’s love, his purpose for existing, would kill him, so he fights for the dignity to keep the subject itself, even if his job is taken from him.

“To the younger son was given the privileged role of the bright schoolboy of whom much was expected and who was therefore to be protected from all things menial; while to the elder (who did not seem to mind) was assigned a lifetime of daily toil.” 

Tom and Dick each represent one innate human trait: Tom the intellectual, and Dick the physical. Neither possesses both, so together they form a complete human being. Both traits have advantages and disadvantages. Tom’s superior intelligence offers him success in the world, but he’s haunted by excessive knowledge and continuous questions. Dick cannot read or write, but he is blissfully naïve and possesses incredible strength.

“It’s true. I told him it was Freddie. Dick killed Freddie Parr because he thought it was him. Which means we’re to blame too.” 

Mary’s revelation is a bombshell that will haunt her and Tom for decades. Even though neither Tom nor Mary ever admit their involvement, their guilt emerges in other ways, most notably in Mary’s psychosis and Tom’s continuing search for answers.

“But what is this much-adduced Here and Now? What is this indefinable zone between what is past and what is to come […] it is the Here and Now that turns out to be the fairy-tale, not History, whose substance is at least for ever determined and unchangeable.” 

Tom’s paramount reason for loving history is its immutability and knowability. One can look back and see all events and their outcomes clearly. The present and future are vastly unknown with myriad possibilities that assure no hope or happy endings, therefore resembling fairy tales more so than the past.

“Children, there is a theory of history which may be called […] the theory of hubris […] even nature teaches us that nothing is given without something being take away.” 

Tom addresses the conflict between humans and nature here, indicating that human interference with nature is not without consequences, and that nature corrects the balance when it is disturbed, by referencing water’s ability to regain equilibrium after being disturbed.

“What is the point of history? Why history? […] your ‘Why’ gives the answer. […] Man, the animal which demands an explanation, the animal which asks Why.” 

Here the ubiquitous “Why?” appears not as a question about a certain action or event but as a comprehensive inquiry about the relevance of history itself. To Tom, the answer is obvious—history can fulfill man’s insatiable curiosity for answers. Although he does not find all the answers to questions concerning his own personal history, his incessant search does shed light in some of its darker corners.

“Because, despite everything, despite emptiness, monotony, this Fenland, this palpable earth raised out of the flood by centuries of toil, is a magical, a miraculous land.” 

Something primordial exists in the Fens that profoundly touches its inhabitants. Land and water, two basic components of life itself, combine to form a wild, raw landscape, a land like no other that’s beautiful in its untouched state. No matter what man does to tame it, it will not surrender, and in staying true to itself, it remains enchanted and mystical.

“Then suddenly she announces: ‘I’m going to have a baby. Because God’s said I will.” 

Mary’s abortion left her empty and damaged; years later she devises a plan to balance what is imbalanced, to replace one death with a life and make herself whole again. Sadly, her plan is born of delusion and has crossed over into either madness or extreme irrationality, causing her sure and final demise into oblivion.

“Though the popular notion of revolution is that of categorical change […] almost every revolution contains within it an opposite if less obvious tendency: the idea of a return. A redemption; a restoration. A reaffirmation of what is pure and fundamental against what is decadent and false. A return to a new beginning…” 

Cleansing and renewal accompany the bloody business of revolution. While obvious changes are expected in a new future full of promise, returning to decency after the chaos and upheaval of a rebellion also leads to a rebirth that gives people stability amid transformation. Tom continues encouraging Price to rebel against “decadent and false” forces and sees hope for “a new beginning” in the youth who reminds him of his maverick grandfather.

“Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops […] Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It’s part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes.”

To Tom, curiosity is the driving force of life and the link between humans and the world. Apathy is death in an extraordinary world that demands to be investigated, explored, and understood. Consequently, curiosity creates the love humans have for the world, however flawed it may be. Once curiosity is extinguished, so are the world’s inhabitants.

“Shall we add to the list of indulgences—superstition, tale-telling, despondency, the bottle—to which these stick-in-the-mud Fen-dwellers are prone, another: Beauty?” 

Even though Fen-dwellers are not known for their outwardly inventive lives, their subtle “indulgences” make up for their lacks. Helen of Troy’s beauty started the Trojan War, and Helen Atkinson’s plight is similar. Ernest’s indulgence in her beauty produces what is expected to be “the Saviour of the World,” but fate instead hands these transgressors havoc and despair.

“And though she didn’t want a child, yet—she wanted a child. She wanted a future. And she was used to nursing men who’d become again like helpless infants. And inside the nurse is a mother.” 

Helen’s strong nurturing abilities and compassion are both advantageous and unfortunate. Her compassion for the childlike men she treats in the hospital translates to kindheartedness for her father, thereby creating the desire to please him as well as to become a mother herself. Sadly, this misguided effort leads to tragic consequences.

“But even a potato-head must sometimes wonder and think. Even a numbskull must sometimes ponder those big and teasing questions: What’s life? What’s it made of? Where does it come from and what’s it for?” 

Tom’s claim that man is a questioning animal includes Dick, since Dick becomes enamored with Mary and wants to know the secrets of love. The inherent instincts in all humans, no matter how deficient, extend to the unquenchable desire to know what life is, what love is, and the reason behind it all.

“But God doesn’t talk any more […] He stopped talking long ago […] We can fend for ourselves. He’s left us alone to make what we will of the world […] God’s for simple, backward people in God-forsaken places.” 

Tom was once filled with faith and hope based on his love for the glorious Fens and his darling Mary. After the deaths of Mary’s baby and Dick, he sees God’s influence in Mary’s life as detrimental instead of beneficial, and he believes God is only for the uneducated and superstitious. For these reasons, and because he has depended on his own strength throughout a difficult life, his beliefs become largely humanistic.

“‘Gone,’ in other words, echoed with mystery. Whilst ‘dead’ is a blunt and natural phenomenon. ‘Gone’—awesome and open-ended—required explanation.” 

One reason Tom repeatedly questions the world and demands explanations is the lack of concrete information he received at a young age, which has kept him continually guessing. Instead of having a truthful conversation with his sons about their mother’s death, Henry uses the word “gone” to describe her departure, a word that forever haunts Tom. Tom’s expectation that Helen would return gave him hope where none existed, causing deep scars and disillusionment.

“But when the world is about to end there’ll be no more reality, only stories. All that will be left to us will be stories. We’ll sit down, in our shelter, and tell stories.” 

In a rare look at the future, Tom sees storytelling outliving reality as a mode of coping with sure destruction and ultimate annihilation. This idea mirrors his own last days, during which he imagines himself with no future. However, he still has his cherished storytelling, which suggests that people create their own reality whether by repurposing past life events or devising new ones to fit their own paradigms and circumstances.

“Love. Lu-love. Lu-lu-love. Does it ward off evil? Will its magic word suspend indefinitely the link between cause and effect? […] Will it disperse these brainstorming firestorms of realization: This is your doing, it wouldn’t have happened if—This ain’t no accident.” 

Tom’s resentment toward Dick surfaces when he rhetorically addresses Dick’s actions with Mary, which might have caused her pregnancy. This is the one time in the novel Tom dismisses curiosity, specifically Dick’s curiosity about love, the reason Mary became intimate with Dick.

“Children, have you ever stepped into another world? Have you ever turned a corner to where Now and Long Ago are the same and time seems to be going on in some other place?”

Tom’s present blends with the past in his final moments with his students. His reality has become surreal. He is blurring reality with unreality, past with present, and no longer lives in the world he has known for decades. Time is taking its toll.

“The candle is snuffed under Mary’s hand. I nearly trip over the pail. In the pail is what the future’s made of. I rush out again to be sick.” 

The light is literally extinguished with the death of Mary’s baby, portending the childless future she and Tom face. Tom is both physically and emotionally devastated by this event.

“First there is nothing; then there is happening. And after the happening, only the telling of it. But sometimes the happening won’t stop and let itself be turned into memory.” 

Tom refers to the natural progression of an event and the telling of it, a large part of his insistence that storytelling is directly linked to historical happenings. However, when the mind won’t move beyond agonizing episodes in life, those moments will stubbornly continue to be a part of the present, not the past.

“And, besides, this war doesn’t stop for Sundays. Doesn’t take a break for church-going or weekend recreation (or even for one little case of murder). There’s no let-up for the citizens of Hamburg and Berlin, who in honour of the Lord’s day are going to get hell.” 

Life goes on, and in another reference to God’s absence, Tom asserts that the world’s conflicts persist and its victims will endure undue suffering as a result of any actions they commit—good or bad.