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 41-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary: “ A Feeling in the Guts”
Back at the pub, Tom tells Price how all of history is reality, how “all the stories were once a feeling in the guts” (297), and how he has that feeling now about leaving the pub. He observes that Price feels that about “Nothing,” but claims Price will remember his “history teacher, who gave these crazy lessons” (297). Instead of leaving, though, Tom revisits the scene at the windmill with Mary, telling Price her method of aborting the baby had not worked, so she insisted they visit Martha Clay, propelling Tom into another “fairy-tale,” this one with a witch.
Chapter 42 Summary: “About the Witch”
Before reaching Martha Clay’s cottage, Tom mentions a different type of geese that now fills the sky. These geese, “made of aluminum and steel, wooden struts and perspex; and with the trick of laying explosive and inflammatory eggs while still in mid-air” (299), are actually World War II bombers. Despite seeing the bombers, Tom and Mary risk their safety to get an abortion from Martha.
The abortion must be performed in secret, and they finally make it to Martha Clay’s remote cottage, which is ancient and replete with superstition.
Mary herself resembles a witch and seems like someone from another time. The abortion takes place, and afterward Mary is so devastated she “doesn’t know me. She’s a little convent girl, staunchly saying her prayers: ‘HolyMaryMotherofGod’” (308), while Tom rushes out to be sick.
Chapter 43 Summary: “Not So Final”
Once out of the pub, Price attempts to bolster Tom as he stumbles down the street. Tom thinks, “The pupil shouldn’t have to guide the master. The rebel shouldn’t have to prop the tyrant” (309). This is embarrassing for the pupil.
Tom boards a bus home but first tells Price not to be “so final. Not so solemn” (310), that they still have the rest of the term and the French Revolution to cover. This prompts another brief aside in which Tom mutters, “And History scarcely finds time to mention that on the eve of the French Revolution Louis XVI mourned his first-born” (310).
Chapter 44 Summary: “Begin Again”
As present-day Tom and Mary attempt to return the stolen baby, Mary claims how easy it was to take it in the first place. When Tom tries to talk sense into her, she seems “under some sort of hypnosis, to be a woman confessing to a crime” (311).
He then realizes she is confused and has told him a false story, so he doesn’t know what to believe, least of all what they will tell the mother and police, who are waiting when they arrive at the scene of the crime. Tom attempts to downplay the situation but knows this cannot be done because the story “is good stuff, this is a real-life drama” (315), and the public wants more, according to the reporters on the scene.
Chapter 45 Summary: “About the Pike”
Flashing back to the days after the murder, Tom watches Dick obtain the key to the trunk in the attic from a compartment in the cabinet holding a dead pike mounted on the wall, Dick’s most prized possession.
In the meantime, Henry has gone to the Metcalf home to “make due representations” to Mary’s father. When he returns, Tom asks about Mary, but Henry replies, “Don’t know, Tom. Can’t say. He damned my—my appurtenance—for asking” (318). Tom adds that there is more to the story that Henry doesn’t know. As Dick produces the key, Tom knows this is his confession to the murder, after which Tom feels compelled to tell him Mary’s baby is Dick’s.
Chapters 41-45 Analysis
Storytelling can bring a sense of freedom, yet the storyteller can falter and become weary toward the end. Nonetheless, a sense of urgency to release necessary truths, to reach closure, strengthens and empowers Tom to continue until the end. This sense of weariness is palpable in Chapter 41 with Tom’s reiteration of fatalistic notions, but he presses on, this time telling the tale that requires the greatest strength—Mary’s abortion.
Gothic elements, including personal torment, madness, and the supernatural, are undeniable in Chapter 42. The World War II bombers that fly overhead foreshadow the oncoming onslaught of innocents, and indicate that Tom and Mary’s fateful journey will end with death and madness. The supernatural “witch” whose cheeks “are not just red […] They’re bladders of fire” (301) is the devil himself laughing at the couple’s folly and gladly wresting the life from the girl once pure and betrothed to God. With this spiritual shock, this loss of three lives instead of one, the point of no return is imminent.
In Chapter 43, both the historical and metaphorical revolutions are almost complete, with new blood replacing old. The old regime is not over yet, despite its obvious inability to sustain itself much longer. It does not hesitate to continue to instruct, this time with the message that even the worst tyrant has a heart. This idea also echoes the unconditional acceptance that Henry emphasizes, and that Tom initially calls stuff of “fairy-tales.”
In Chapter 44, the title “Begin Again” gives hope for an enlightening renewal or rebirth that might break the characters’ curses, but Mary’s public humiliation brings more despair and pessimism instead of relief, even though the real mother does get her baby back. In actuality, this title reinforces storytelling’s rather sadistic ability to entertain at the expense of human suffering. Even worse, people wish to hear painful, “real-life drama” again and again (315).
Events in Chapter 45 resemble the constant ebb and flow of the waterland. This ebb and flow both hides and reveals things throughout the narrative. One such revelation is another major symbol, the pike. Dick is more pike than person. Tom’s nickname for him—potato-head—is derived from the pike potato, but the pike fish is the focus here. Dick’s extreme comfort in the water and awkwardness on land suggests he has never evolved into a full human being able to live as others do. His solitary way of life, aggressiveness, and killer instinct all mimic different aspects of the pike’s behavior.
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By Graham Swift
