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Why is “history” such a central theme in the novel Waterland
to the ‘here and now’ of existence/being over grand narratives of becoming.
The novel has no minor heroes, they are all minds in progress, brought to the front. the novel is a merry-go-round meant to shock the reader into remembrance of things past. Yet history is made present. It chooses informal narration and join hands with all readers. So, Waterland offers the confusion of characters who are nonetheless trying to steer some kind of sustainable and hopeful course through their confusion. That course is story-telling. Good story-telling can, without denying or misrepresenting the actual confusion of life, redeem it. Strange heroes undergo half-revealed experiences and all along they wonder whether life is worth living. A life that “was set out like a map.” No excitement. No promise. No future. This is, indeed, Graham Swift’s major feat: his novels abolish the future.
The idea of history repeating itself is possibly human nature – with reference to the fear of nuclear war – Swift suggests that now humans have progressed to the point of progression to the point that the possibility of progress has been eliminated, which is fundamentally a post-modern concern. There is the suggestion that it is human nature to be interested in the past because of the effect it has on us. Because animals act instinctively they have no need for the past and have no concept of time passing. Although Dick originally acts purely on instinct he becomes more humanised as time passes with the advent of his ability to plan and scheme to murder Freddie Parr, and when he eventually comes to realise that the past is important he kills himself.
One of the main themes of the novel and one of the points Swift tries to communicate to us is the idea that history repeats itself. The French Revolution was a return to nature as Rousseau proposed. So in the classroom Crick teaches that history will repeat itself on a grand scale, via the French Revolution, Napoleon then Hitler invading Russia, and on countless other occasions. But when he begins to teach informally and teaches the class of his personal history and the history of the Fens he teaches that history can repeat itself in smaller circumstances – from large events such as the French Revolution to the small uprising in the classroom. “The dead are dead aren’t they? The past is done with, isn’t it?” Crick asks these rhetorical questions not to receive an answer from his class but to make them think about the nature of history and the nature of progression, which is paradoxically his real job.
The book ends with Dick’s flight, with everybody’s flight, in fact. Mary leaves sanity, Tom Crick leaves his classes of history, we leave the text. This book of pinching, interruptions and delays may well be a progress in the art of novel writing, but it sure is not a bright place to linger in. Our imagination, held captive while the suspense lasted, steps out of both story and history, and bolts [next page]