Waterland

The will-o’-the-wisp, a colorful apparition occasionally observed hovering over marshy land at night, literally appears on the Fens at times, but it primarily functions as a misleading omen. It first appears when Henry is excited to see an actual “willythewisp,” but he is “amazed. So amazed that he forgets that, by tradition, will-o’-the-wisps are bad signs” (232). This vision occurs on the day he and Helen receive the infamous black trunk from Ernest Atkinson containing the disconcerting letter to Dick. During the torturous evening when Tom and Mary traverse the hills to Martha’s cottage, it is “the time of owls and will-o’-the-wisps. Right time to arrive at a witch’s” (300-01). In the novel’s last line, nighttime approaches “in the will-o’-the-wisp dusk,” suggesting heart-wrenching days ahead for the remaining Cricks.

Eels and pike fish both exist in the Leem and Ouse Rivers on the Fens. Both hold value for the Fens dwellers, and each has its own symbolic merit. The pub’s name, The Eel and Pike, indicates their importance to the area.

Tom expounds on several literal and symbolic aspects of the eel when he says, “Now there is much that the eel can tell us about curiosity […] controversy has raged about the still obscure life cycle of this snake-like, fish-like, highly edible, not to say phallically suggestive creature” (196). The eel as a food source provides life, but it also possesses a more powerful quality: It prompts the insatiable curiosity to know its reproductive truth, playing right into Tom’s idea that curiosity is the very essence of life. This phallic reference is undeniable when Freddie puts an eel down Mary’s pants, foreshadowing her pregnancy and suggesting that the situation offers more questions than answers. Finally, imagery reminiscent of the eel appears in Tom’s discourse on the “slippery” properties of time:

“And why is it that every time the time before has taught us nothing? […] How it repeats itself, how it goes back on itself, no matter how we try to straighten it out. How it twists and turns. How it goes in circles and brings us back to the same place” (142).

He tells students he is not elaborating on the eel to teach biology but “to point a contrast, to call it Natural History. Which doesn’t go anywhere. Which cleaves to itself. Which perpetually travels back to where it came from” (205).

Dick’s favorite possession is a pike whose “stuffed and mounted carcass” (315) graces the wall and holds the key to his father’s trunk. Tom says Dick has the “vacant stare of a fish” (242) and the ability to hold his breath underwater for a remarkable amount of time. Though he’s compared to a fish by his peers, other darker comparisons exist. Tom has always been afraid of the pike, considering it “alive and not alive. Dead yet unperished. A ghost” (316), especially as it gave him nightmares as a child. He knows pikes are killers who trap prey in a vicious manner, and he calls them “freshwater-wolves.” After Dick’s death, he claims, “But Dick’s no longer a creature to be feared,” just like the dead pike on the wall (316). Tom’s words indicate that Dick was never really alive or dead but always in between, with superior physical qualities, inferior mental ones, and the capacity to harm others. Now that he is gone, he’s nothing to be feared but “a memorable specimen” (315) whose ultimate sacrifice deserves to be remembered.