In three pages this paper discusses how in his text Waterland Graham Swift uses history with examples provided. Three sources are cited in the bibliography.
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Waterland, discusses many facets of history, in particular the ending of history as everyone knows it. Throughout the book, in fact, Swift seems obsessed with the idea of history, itself,
and it comes to almost have a life of its own. This of course, begs the question: what is it about history that has Swift so concerned? The main character
is a history teacher named Tom Crick who has just learned that he is about to be fired because history is no longer considered significant or of any intrinsic value.
Given this, then, Tom examines his own personal history and brings up the question: What is the point of history? Many experts have claimed that history has indeed come
to an end. They state this because to them history needs struggle and conflict to exist. This idea is based upon the premise that after the fall of communism and
the end of the cold war, there was really only one philosophy of government which was prevalent around the globe and that was of the Western liberalism. Without any diverse
ideologies to oppose it, there was no history(Schlad 911). "Theres this thing called progress. But it doesnt progress, it doesnt go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip
away. Its progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-endingly retrieving what is lost"(Swift 336).
In this passage time, or history, seems to have been implied to have stopped, because without forward progress, there can be
no new history created. Therefore, writing history, anyones history, only comes after a fall, because the creation of history is in response to the question "why," and people only ask