Waterland

Product Information

Büyük anlatı demişken; anlatıcımız Fransız devrimi uzmanı ancak bu ve diğer bütün büyük anlatılar haliyle bir dünya imkanı varken işe yarayan bilgiler ve kendi dünyasının çöküşü, öğrencilerinin dünyanın genel çöküşünü – rüyaya dair bölümü, nükleer felaket beklentili 80’ler- beklediği momentle çakışınca ve dahi tarih kesintiye uğramışken başka bir anlatını kapısı açılıyor. Tarihsel ilerlemenin bir adım ileri iki adım geri formunun benzeri bir biçimde anlatı, kişisel olanın sınırlarının tarihsel olanın sınırıyla bulanık bir halde ileri geri savruluşuna hikaye dinleyicisi olarak tanık okur olarak eşlik ediyoruz sayfalar boyunca. Anlatını merkezinde bir hikaye, üç ceset ve bir tarih var: 1943. Adorno az sonra şiirin sonunu ilan edecek, Hitler sonu ya zafer ya hüsran olacak adımlar atacak ama biz dünyanın sonuna kadar biraz daha hikaye dinleyeceğiz ama hiçbir hikaye bize sonuna kadar burada ne oluyor, ne olmuştu, ne oldunun cevabını vermeyecek. Tarihi biraz biliyorsak, bütün anlatıların öznel olduğunu da biliyoruzdur ve biraz Faulkner biliyorsak geçmişin asla geçmediğini, geçmişin geçmiş bile olmadığını biliyoruz. Is history simply a record of past mistakes? How do religious beliefs fit into the picture? Can knowledge of past events make us better people? With knowledge can we make better decisions? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Life without curiosity is a dead end. If you have curiosity, how can one stop asking why, why, why as life unrolls? If you are a person who incessantly asks why, the need for history is a given. Waterland is a story about storytelling, a narrative about narration that analyses the meaning and the necessity of history. Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.”

Waterland exhibits the subgenre Historiographic Metafiction. Canadian academic Linda Hutcheon coined the term in 1987 in her essay 'Beginning to Theorize the Postmodern'. Historiographic metafictions self-consciously draw attention to how history and the practice of writing history are a construction. History is a narrative created by people which means historical documents can have biases and inaccuracies according to who wrote the documents, or whether such documents have been preserved in time. Kaip aš jums noriu papasakoti apie šią knygą, ir kartu kaip jaudinuosi, kad neužteks žodžių, kad nežinau nuo ko pradėti. O jausmų tiek daug ir gilių kilo, ir nesu tikra, ar visus juos įžodint galiu. This success was in spite of the fact that the project was vigorously opposed by the local people, who had lived in the area for centuries and who feared the loss of their traditional hunting and fishing rights. They also resented the Dutch workers Vermuyden employed. (The narrator in Waterland mentions how the local fen dwellers cut the throats of the Dutch workers and threw their bodies into the very water they had been employed to drain.) Local opposition forced the authorities to agree to compensation for the native fen dwellers and also to employ only English workers.

And so the protagonist of the book, Tom, a history teacher in a high school, tells us a story. About the “waterland”, the low-lying fens somewhere in east England. About drainage and beer brewing, madness and murder, coming of age, incest, abortion and childlessness. Masculinity and Identity: The novel explores themes of masculinity and identity, particularly through the character of Tom, who struggles to come to terms with his own sense of self and place in the world. The novel also examines the ways in which societal expectations of masculinity can lead to violence and aggression.

The first attempts to drain the fens were made by the ancient Romans. In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I also wished to undertake the project to improve the region's agricultural yields. But it was not until the seventeenth century that drainage of the fens took place on a large scale. This was a massive engineering project that caused enormous ecological changes in the region and took several decades to accomplish. The impetus came from the Duke of Bedford and wealthy investors in London who wished to increase the value of the land they owned, which they could then sell at a profit. There is an excitement, a sense of tension that builds in the novel. You want to know more and more and more. A sentence is started and then left hanging. You know exactly what was to be said but is then not said. This writing style is unusual; I have not run into it before. It’s good, very good. It draws your attention, keeps you alert and adds suspense. There is an underlying satirical tone that has you questioning what is implied. The prose is thought provoking. Abortion is illegal in Britain, and illegal abortions are performed by untrained people. Many women are seriously injured and about thirty die each year.Loss is very prevalent in Waterland. Many of the central characters lose very significant things throughout Swift's novel. The impact of loss is also shown. Rainer, Peter (6 November 1992). "MOVIE REVIEW: The Past Flows Poetically Through 'Waterland' ". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 20 March 2020. Family and Relationships: The novel delves into the complex relationships between family members, including the dynamics of power, violence, and betrayal. Tom's reflections on his family's past reveal the hidden tensions and secrets that have shaped their relationships over time. Tom is away fighting in World War II. Finally the two fathers agree to bring their children together again; unknown to them, Tom has already written to Mary. When he comes home, the two marry, and Tom begins his teaching career, while Mary takes a position in an old persons’ home. They live thus for more than thirty years; then Mary gives up her job and becomes actively involved in the church. Finally, she steals a baby because “God tells her to.” She explains the new arrival to Tom by saying that it is a gift from God. Obviously demented and obviously suffering from a pain that has been festering since her teenage abortion, Mary is arrested. Tom, as recounted above, is forced into an early retirement as a result of this disgrace. The teaching of history has broadened and now includes the history of people and topics formerly ignored, such as women and minorities. There is a fierce debate in the history profession about methods of studying history.

I'm not kidding. This book gets a little ridiculous. It's a semi-Postmodern text examining the difficulty of writing Realism in a Postmodern era, but it goes off on romantic (not Romantic) tangents about natural history and cultural history and all, in a very Julian Barnes ( A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters) way. Then it goes into creepy, Stephen King-esque scenes with the children exploring the two great draws in life: sex and death. (The only constants, heh.) I ended up wishing either Stephen King or Julian Barnes had written it, and focused on it - as it is, the tension is uneasy, and yet uneasy in a way that really contributes to the novel and its aims. Although I do love how the idea of storytelling is played with in this novel: the idea that we can't bear reality without the stories we create to endow it with meaning, because otherwise reality is too strong, too harsh, and will overpower us. But again, that's very Barnes. For centuries the fens of eastern England were vast desolate marsh areas. Patches of firm ground were interspersed with rivers, pools, and reed-beds. The rivers could be navigated only by shallow-bottomed boats. The fens harbored abundant bird life and sea life, especially eels (as Waterland makes clear). The plot of the novel revolves around loosely interwoven themes and narrative, including the attraction of the narrator's brother to his girlfriend/wife, a resulting murder, a girl having an abortion that leaves her sterile, and her later struggle with depression. As an adult woman, she kidnaps a baby. In his 2017 lecture to the British Academy, John Burnside discussed an important strand of British fiction over the last thirty years – exemplified by work by Graham Swift, Adam Thorpe and Michael Bracewell – in which the growth of ‘cultural totalitarianism’ has engendered a profound grief for the consequent loss of communal and ritual life, as well as for the land itself which has been ‘savagely degraded’ over the same period. In this extract, he talks about the 1983 novel Waterland by Graham Swift.What is drawn is no happy story, but it feels real. We read of the discovery and awakening of sexual desire. Of incest, mental retardation, jealousy and envy. Abortion and deaths. A father fights in the First World War and his son in the Second World War. Do we all live in the fens of history, I dare to ask? And is there more to it than trying to keep our heads above the water of its recurring floods? The film moved the contemporary location from England to Pittsburgh and eliminated many of the extensive historical asides.

It's partly to do with how clever it is and the skilful way Swift uses the past to explain the present and create a feeling of inexorable flow towards the book's climactic events: incest in the 1910s, leading to a murder in the 1940s, to a kidnapping in the 1980s. Tai viena tų istorijų, kurioje man nėra labai svarbu iki kur nuves, kaip baigsis. Joje svarbu būti, išgyventi, jausti. Ir nors tikrai buvo smalsu, kaip ta baigta dėlionė atrodys, procesas džiugino daug labiau! Mėgavausi, kai buvau viliojama ir už rankos vedama, pastūmiama prireikus, ar tiesiogiai pabaksnojama faktais prieš akis.💛Abortion is legal if performed in the first twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy. This law was established by the 1967 Abortion Act.