History and Story Telling in Graham Swifts Waterland Essay -- Waterla

floor and Story Telling in Graham Swifts WaterlandWaterland uses history, theory, and fictional biography to name the question of history. The blurring of boundaries betwixt history, story, and theory questions the construction of those boundaries as well as the closure and linear nature of traditional narrative. If Waterland has a beginning, it is far in the geologic past, at a time when the continents began their slow journey to the positions they forthwith occupy however, the novel itself does not begin at this beginning. Waterland moves forward and reverse through geologic, historic, and biographic time. By denying the linearity and absolute authority of historical narrative, Swift leaves room for rupture and revision, for stories and nostalgia. The historical and biographical accounts provide a context for the doctrine and theory that the narrator interjects throughout the novel the philosophy and theory facilitate the leaps in time between geologic, historic, and biograph ic past. Swifts alter of (what appears to be) a real geologic history of the fens and the fictional accounts of the Crick and Atkinson families blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, turning history into fiction and placing fiction within a real historical account. ( walker 1) Waterland, as a novel, makes the same proposal that tomcat Crick makes to his class to discover and reveal the purpose of history by telling a story. The study of semiotics shows that language is the primary intermediary in the construction of reality. All systems of signification are dependent on language, and the development of outlet position is determined through the act of speaking. (footnote 2) In a discussion of language functions, Fredric Jameson d... ... Tom Crick are purely fictional however, the possibility remains that they may be fictionalized biographical incidents establish on events that occurred to or are known by the author, Graham Swift. This boost complicates the blurring of boundaries between fiction and reality. footnote 2 See the work of Jacques Lacan and Emile Benveniste.footnote 3 I am not limiting Tom Cricks subject position to only three possibilities I only offer these as three possibilities from a multiplicity. footnote 4 I am spell-bound by the idea of Sarah Atkinsons stories and have been telling myself her possible stories. Were her mysterious appearances Sarahs stories gravel to life because she could not tell them? Did she find another way to forge her stories? Did she hear the stories others told and (re)tell them, inserting herself into the narrative?