Chapter 15 Summary

"About the Ouse"

The Great Ouse is the major waterway into which the Leem, the river on which the Cricks live, empties. This chapter is another essay type dissertation, where Crick describes the slow moving Ouse, as a footloose and obstinate river, "unconcerned with ambition."

Chapter 15 Analysis

This chapter continues the previous narrative concerning the natural world of the Fens. The Ouse is something of a metaphor for the Crick family - like the river, Tom Crick has lived a life that meandered as opposed to taking a specific direction - for example, Tom Crick never tells us of any burning ambition or passion to achieve anything in his life. Like the Ouse, Crick seems to move along in the world not directed by ambition, but by circumstance