Analyzing the Characters of WaterlandIn "Waterland" Swift weaves a magical yet disturbing story of ordinary characters experiencing their own struggles and problems unadorned by the complexity of world history but forever revolving around the isolated and mysterious Fenns. His characters are a formidable mix of the stereotypical and the extraordinary as he shows us how even the most ordinary person can lead the strangest and most complex life and display a wide range of opposing emotions and thoughts. "Waterland" is a profound study of the human being and nature that not only shows the complexity of people but also analyzes the men and women who live among us and for whom each of us can find a name. We all know an Ernest Atkinson, a bourgeois born rich who finds meaning in life in Marx's texts which push him to oppose the life that was imposed on him by angering his city and his family. Ernest is the most interesting character as he shows how geniuses and men with unorthodox 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 the kidnapping of a child; the transformation of her personality following the abortion and growing mental instability show the fragility of the human mind. His character, that of Ernest, is surprisingly realistic and therefore one of the most effective characters in the novel. One of the most compelling features of Swift's writing is his mysterious characters, he describes people only in the most important and relevant part of their lives and the rest is left to the readers' imagination. He also surprises the reader by withholding vital information about a character for a couple of chapters and then suddenly revealing it, thus completely changing the reader's perspective. This allows him to develop extraordinarily complex minds in very short periods of time as he describes only what strikes and always brings new dimensions to old characters, so he shows what Maria was like when she was a "little Madonna" and abruptly changes our whole perspective of her when we learn of her adventures, thus losing the first layer of mystery and giving the reader something new to think about. Swift also gives us information for some characters right at the beginning of "Waterland" and it takes the entire novel for us to know how that person died (in Dick's case) or went mad (in Mary's case).).