47 pages • 1 hour read
Graham SwiftWaterland
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “An Empty Vessel”
Tom, continuing to address his class, elaborates on the multifaceted aspects of reality as it plays out in life. He first refers to it as “an empty vessel” that must be filled with storytelling or some other pastime, then later calls a woman’s womb “an empty but fillable vessel” (42). He alludes to his wife’s journey from a secluded life of devotion to her marriage to her recent psychological break from reality, an event that prompted his firing and his recounting of “these fantastic-but-true, these believe-it-or-not-but-it-happened Tales of the Fens” (42).
Chapter 7 Summary: “About Holes and Things”
Tom continues his tale by describing his relationship with his wife, Mary, before they were married. He divulges details of Mary’s background; their sexual relationship; their experiences with peers, including the dead boy, Freddie Parr; and Freddie’s dad’s illegal exploits.
The day the body is found, Tom and Mary rendezvous at a secret location. Mary then tells Tom that Freddie was killed by Tom’s brother, Dick. The previous night, she witnessed Dick push Freddie, who can’t swim, into the water. Moreover, Mary is pregnant, and she’s been intimate with both Dick and Tom. Because of Dick’s jealousy, she lied by saying that the father is the Freddie (to protect Tom). After revealing that Dick is to blame for the death, Mary then says, “we’re to blame too” (56).
Chapter 8 Summary: About the Story-telling Animal”
Back in the classroom, Tom opines on the “Here and Now” and its many facets. He claims, “life includes a lot of empty space” (61), and in that space people tell stories. He also concludes that “history is a yarn” and defines man as “the story-telling animal” (62). He vows to tell his students yet another story from his own past that later connects to the main narrative.
Chapter 9 Summary: “About the Rise of the Atkinsons”
After contrasting the Atkinson family with his own by asserting that they “got Ideas—something the stick-in-the-mud Cricks rarely entertained” (63), and that “whereas the Cricks emerged from water, the Atkinsons emerged from beer” (64), Tom discloses a lengthy history of the Atkinson family. He reveals that his grandfather was an Atkinson.
Chapter 10 Summary: “About the Questions Why”
Tom insists that history is important simply because man asks the question, “Why?” He then reminds his students of when “I used to ask you to liken the study of history to an inquest” (107) in which there is a situation demanding an explanation. Even though there may not be a solid answer, Tom says we gain “knowledge of the limits of our power to explain” (108) and apply it to the present.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
The struggle with reality, and how this theme wreaks havoc by affecting the characters’ abilities to sort out their own lives, plays a large role in this section. In admitting reality’s elusiveness and unpredictability, Tom once again returns to the comfort of storytelling, this time in an attempt to fill the empty space of his own life and cathartically release his feelings of alienation and inner turmoil. Mary’s loss of sanity is an escape mechanism, as she attempts to protect herself from her haunting past. In creating herself a new story, she replaces old demons with new hope that sadly lacks any real basis whatsoever, further propelling her into an even darker reality than before.
By highlighting the outcome of the characters’ early actions, Swift elicits sympathy for them when Tom’s tone changes from anxious to nostalgic as he relays his early courtship. His recollection is highlighted by rare cheerful imagery denoted in the “broad Fen sunlight […] genially smiling” (51). Swift is adept at giving readers just enough levity between intense moments to temper the somber moods that pervade the text. Accordingly, Tom and Mary’s bliss abruptly halts when the two must face the unintended consequences and accountability issues regarding Freddie’s death. In Chapter 8, the theme of historia—history depicted through storytelling—reappears, reinforcing the idea that man’s intrinsic urge to use his imagination shapes his reality, as exemplified by Tom’s character throughout the novel.
Chapter 9 underscores another major narrative thread: Even though people’s lives have dissimilar trajectories, they can intersect in unpredictable ways. The Cricks’ and the Atkinsons’ attitudes, motives, and lifestyles seem to clash, yet they converge at a pivotal juncture that has yet to be revealed. Swift opens Chapter 10 with the theme of necessary curiosity and its ability to unearth vital explanations to life’s unanswered questions. The arguments Tom makes for history coincide with this idea in that it teaches the investigative mind to “avoid illusion and make-believe […] to be realistic” (108). Here, Tom’s distinction between superstition, or “illusion and make-believe,” and storytelling emerges. To him, storytelling relays facts in a creative mode, not with “pie-in-the-sky” (108) nonsense, even if stories are used to escape empty moments in life.
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