Analyzing the Characters of Waterland :: Waterland Essays

Analyzing the Characters of Waterland In Waterland Swift weaves a magical however haunting tale of ordinary characters who live through theyre testify struggles and problems unadorned by the complexity of world history yet incessantly revolving around the isolated and mysterious Fenns. His characters are a formidable mix in of the stereotyped and the unordinary as he shows us how even the almost super C person tail assembly lead the strangest and most complex life and ostentation a vast range of opposed emotions and thoughts. Waterland is a profound work of human nature that not only displays the intricacies of people but withal analyses the men and woman that live among us and for which each of us can find a name. Thus we all know an Ernest Atkinson, a buttoned-down born into wealth who finds a meaning in life in the texts of Marx which push him to oppose the life that has been imposed on him and then angering his townsfolk and family. Ernest is the most interesting ch aracter in that he shows how geniuses and men with unconventional ideas are often called rebels and segregated from the rest of society in their uniqueness and intensity. Mary in Waterland leads a disturbingly bizarre life that ends with her kidnap a baby the transformation of her personality following the abortion and her change magnitude mental instability shows the fragility of the human mind. Her character as that of Ernest is astoundingly practical and thus one of the most effective characters in the novel. One of the most compelling characteristics of Swifts writing is his mysterious characters, he only describes people at the most important and relevant part of their lives and the rest is left to the ratifiers imagination. He also surprises the reader by withholding vital selective information some a character for a couple chapters than suddenly revealing it thus changing the readers perspective completely. This permits him to build up formidably complex minds in very short periods of time as he only describes what is impinging and always brings new dimensions to old characters thus he shows what Mary was the like when she was a little Madonna and abruptly changes our whole perspective of her when we read of her adventures thus shedding the first layer of mystery and giving the reader something new to reflect on. Swift also for some of the characters gives us information at the very the beginning of Waterland and it takes the whole novel for us to take on how that person died (in the case of Dick) or became insane (in the case of Mary).