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Waterland charts the history of an individual, or more accurately it charts the history of the individual through particular events and examines how they played a part in shaping who he was to become and the later events of his life. Though, Swift blurs the distinctions relating to the genre making it difficult to relate the novel to a particular genre. The post-modern tradition of blurring narratives and techniques and crossing the lines between genres is clearly present in Waterland. Throughout the novel, we have to assume that all of what Crick says is true, that it is not embellished, that it has not been mistakenly forgotten with the passing of time. But the novel Waterland tries to not teach us the facts of the protagonist's life but to teach us the purpose of history, at least to the novel’s main characters. This is one of the key points to consider when studying the novel – what it tries to teach the reader, for the novel tries to teach something to the reader. This can be manifestly seen in Waterland by the use of the pedagogical tone, and the recurrent use of the word ‘children’ to start paragraphs and threads of thought. The novel is very much a post-modern venture; the disjointed narrative of Waterland has its roots in post-modernism and its concerns with history are essentially post-modern. Although Swift appears to take cues from modernist texts and modernist writers, in particular from Ulysses and from not simply James Joyce but also Virginia Woolf. Stream-of-Consciousness writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf meant to smash the narrative and submerge fiction in lyricism. Swift is also overwhelmingly lyrical, but in a totally different manner. He returns to the pleasure of the well-told story and enjoys the narrative. The account of it is meant to baffle and instigate the reader to active rereading. The narrative uses two major tricks. One of them is the already familiar alternating of past and present, memory and the birth of experience, the moment that flits by even while we read. The second trick is the use of “I” and “he” for points of reference in the narrative. The book becomes a game which hurls together broken chronology and the point of view, a disabused attempt at being new, yet giving the impression the author does not care. The truth is he does care – a lot – but the right manner is hard to find. In Waterland, Swift has created a narrative fabric in which it was possible to insert what is almost an essay on the natural history of the eel, but the chapter on the eel has its relevance and purpose within the whole. The tendency in Waterland has been away from this sort of authorial mixing of styles towards a tone that’s governed by its characters. Swift does not feel at home with straight, sequential narrative. This partly because moving around in time, having interruptions and delays, is more exciting and has more dramatic potential, but also it is more truthful to the way our minds actually deal with time.
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