Abstract

In Graham Swift’s “Waterland,” with his principal recommending early retirement, Tom Crick faces his last history class. In the class, Tom asks his students to explain the meaning and importance of history in the present moment. Through this process of Tom asking questions about history, the focus of the narrative changes in “Waterland.” A significant historical event, such as the French Revolution, the metanarrative, is gradually transformed into Tom’s history as inquiry, his storytelling, and eventually his personal history and traumatic experience. Hence, Swift presents history as inquiry in “Waterland,” wherein he exhibits a blurred boundary between historiographic metafiction and trauma fiction. History as inquiry is embodied in Tom’s story-telling by constantly asking the students why. Furthermore, the inquiry, which is made of the students, is connected not only to the reader but to Tom himself and his personal story. By investigating Tom’s individual story—especially related to the forgotten one in his memory—the novel discusses Tom’s trauma. Therefore, Tom’s trauma cannot be explained outside the historical context of the novel, as has been claimed by some critics.