AQA A-Level English Literature A Paper 2: Texts in shared contexts (2B), June 2025: Question 14

Question 14

Waterland – Graham Swift

Examine the significance of teachers and teaching in Waterland.

[25 marks]

Possible content:

Please refer to pages 4 to 7.

AO5 Explore literary texts informed by different interpretations

Students might consider:

• ideas about teachers and ideas about teaching equally, or choose to prioritise either aspect of the

task focus

• various types of teaching and learning activities portrayed within the text

• characters who impart different kinds of knowledge and understanding, and may therefore be seen

as ‘teachers’, eg Martha Clay and Mary Metcalf

• the role of Henry Crick, and his ‘education’ of his two sons, Tom and Dick; other fathers who may

be seen to 'teach' lessons

• ideas about ‘coming of age’ and the loss of innocence, linked to the ways in which some

characters acquire an ‘education’ in terms in sexual, emotional or psychological knowledge and/or

awareness

• the relationship between history teacher Tom Crick and his A-level History class, which moves

away from being taught an official curriculum subject by a practising teacher

• the role of the A-level History students as Tom Crick’s narratees; the class’s response when Tom

abandons the official A-level syllabus to discuss other types of ‘history’

• Price’s belief that Tom’s lessons about the past are a way of avoiding the contemporary threat of

nuclear war in the early 1980s, and his rejection of the official curriculum in favour of forming a

‘Holocaust Club’

• that Price’s explanation of the Holocaust Club to Tom reverses their student-teacher dynamic

• etc.

AO4 Explore connections across literary texts

Focus might be on:

• prose representations of teachers, teaching, learning and education in modern literature

• etc.

AO3 Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which

literary texts are written and received

Focus might be on:

• how the importance of teachers, teaching, learning and education within the novel is embedded

within the specific social, historical and cultural contexts of both the 1940s and the 1980s and how

responses to him might suggest changing responses over time

• the ways in which narrative methods are integral to the novel’s presentation of teachers, teaching,

learning and education

• etc.

AO2 Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts

Focus might be on:

• aspects of narrative form and genre, especially the ways in which Swift has structured the text as a

postmodern metafiction

• aspects of structure, eg the ways in past and present are entwined within the narrative

• language effects eg dialogue and description

• how the retrospective and non-linear narrative may be seen to shape the reader’s response in

relation to the question

• etc.

AO1 Articulate informed, personal and creative responses to literary texts, using associated

concepts and terminology, and coherent, accurate written expression

• quality of argument

• organisation of ideas

• use of appropriate concepts and terminology

• technical accuracy.

Accept any valid interpretations, any valid comments on contexts and any valid discussion of

authorial methods.