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 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Longitude 0°”
After 52-year-old Mary reveals the stunning news that she will have a baby, she and Tom sit on a park bench close to their London home in Greenwich Park. After many agonizing moments of silence, all she can say is, “Wait—you see” (148), after which Tom tells her she needs medical help and thinks to himself that she might have schizophrenia. He is determined to face reality, and “the last thing he wants to believe is that he’s in fairy-land” (148).
Chapter 17 Summary: “About the Lock-Keeper”
Resuming where he left off in Chapter 15, Tom imparts the story of his father the lock-keeper, “who was a phlegmatic yet sentimental man” (148). Henry Crick goes to war, falls in love with his nurse, and marries her, only to lose this wonderful woman when she suddenly dies, leaving Henry a nervous, superstitious man who paces incessantly.
Chapter 18 Summary: “In Loco Parentis”
Tom reverts back to the topic of Lewis Scott, the headmaster, and exposes Lewis’s secrets to the class—mainly that he drinks excessively. Tom then describes the scene where Lewis once again defends his reason for firing Tom. They get into a heated metaphysical discussion about history and dreams. The conversation ends when Tom says, “Lewis, tell me something. Our business is children. Do you believe in children?” (156).
Chapter 19 Summary: “About My Grandfather”
Tom returns once again to his family’s history, this time expounding on his grandfather, Ernest Richard Atkinson—rebellious youth, political Liberal, brewmaster, and somber soul—who attempts to bring joy to the masses through his beer but instead is considered a drunk and shunned by the community. Tom surprisingly realizes his grandfather’s “inward melancholy and fear for the future […] In a curly-haired lad called Price” (162).
Chapter 20: “The Explanation of Explanation”
Back in the classroom, Tom orders Price to meet with him after school, when “at the end of lessons, playing his part perfectly too: the shame-faced—but unrepentant—offender” (163), Price awaits his comeuppance. Tom explains that Price cannot do good work in history class and at the same time dismiss history altogether.
He adds that he doesn’t like interruptions and asks Price for an explanation. The student replies, “I’m here to learn, sir” (164). He later observes, “You know what your trouble is, sir? […] Everything’s got to have an explanation […] And people only explain when things are wrong, don’t they?” (166-67). Tom has no answer for this but considers these words a challenge to make him think.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
In Chapter 16, Mary’s character embodies the circle-of-time theme when she reaches back in the past to gain renewal through the motherhood she never had. Ironically, Tom faces the hard truth this time, as she is the storyteller creating an imagined reality in which even the most outlandish act can seem justified. However, according to the circle-of-time theory, this story can only end as it began.
Chapter 17 highlights Henry’s multidimensional character, showing how a deceptively simple character becomes increasingly complex based on life events. Henry does not need to invent an alternate reality, as his actual story provides more than he can handle. His profession as a lock-keeper symbolizes his ability to keep things locked up inside, such as the family secrets he clings to. Both his and Tom’s marriages show the repercussions of repressed secrets and how they eventually materialize in unexpected ways if not revealed.
Exposed secrets and the theme of parenting resurface in Chapter 18, this time stressing the negative attributes of the detached authority figure neglecting his duties at the expense of his “children”—or students, as in Lewis’s case. Tom’s method of impassioning students with a thirst for knowledge contrasts sharply with Lewis’s “desire to protect and provide” (152), a mode of parenting Tom calls crazy. For Tom, one’s perspective informs one’s actions in life.
Ernest Atkinson personifies the revolutionary spirit prevalent in the novel. In order to inject a ray of hope for Ernest’s ideals, Swift resurrects Ernest in the young Price. True learning takes place in Chapter 20, when rebelliousness begets wisdom as the student challenges the master’s theories and explanations for life’s mysteries, arguing that the method is flawed and counterproductive. In true judicious fashion, Tom opens his mind to the implications, impressed with Price’s astute insight.
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By Graham Swift
