“The Man in the Well”, written by Ira Sher, is a short story about a group of children that while playing find a man stuck in a well. The children collectively decided to not help the man out of the well. They instead decided to talk to the man and ask him questions. There were a lot of games in the story, the children started out in the beginning of the story playing a game. It felt as if the children thought of the man as a pet or a game for them to play. The children got to hot while sitting outside the well, so they left the man in the well while they went and cooled off at the movie theater; never once having the idea to get the man any help. Could the children be so callous as to leave the man and go watch a movie? By these children’s actions they failed understand that the adult was in danger.
At the time, the children did not really feel like they were doing anything wrong, but they did know enough to bring the man food and water. Even though they were not going to help him get out of the well, they still wanted to help him in some way. Whenever the man would ask if help was on its way, the children would always lie and tell him help would be there soon. I don’t understand the need these children felt to keep lying to the man. They kept giving him a false sense of hope. The children turned their visits into a game asking the man questions, with the man also asking the children questions. Most of the questions the man asked the children would answer, but the man never answered a question that the children asked him. ‘What’s your name?’ Was the first question that was asked by the children. This question was reoccurring by both the man and the children. People are born into this world nameless and they are strangers. Whe...
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...n Aaron spoke everyone’s name.
There were two instances in the story when the man in the well asked, ‘Do you think it will rain?’ Both times the girl Wendy answered, ‘No, I don’t think so.’(117,118) However, when the children went home that last night it finally rained. Whether the man drowned in the well from the rain or was able to use the rain to get out of the well, I am not sure of. The rain seems to show an ending to it all, as a way of washing it all away. While the man was in the well the children never showed any guilt, but they never went back to the well. Even as the children grew up they never went back to the well. The narrator says that he will never go back, but in a way he has. He is remembering this story and it is obviously something that he remembers very clear, so in a way he does go back to that well and revisits it every time he thinks of it.
“When i was a child i played with my cousin outside, where the lamplight fell upon the group and the singing of the old people rose around us and carries away into the darkness.” the idea of dark and light is a motif throughout this whole story not only showing good versus evil but also knowledge and the lack of knowledge. This also encompasses the traditions of singing and dancing. The elders and the singing bring knowledge which is represented through the lamplight which is singing on the children, who will soon gain the knowledge passed down. “Still, it was early in the morning, and the birds sang out of the shadows.” this is when he is older and the birds are the elders, still singing their traditional songs. This time we is in the light because his grandmother dies, and because he is older. In a way he is coming to realizations and the truth is seeping through. His personal experiences in rainy mountain helped his discover partes of himself, both the playful, happy child, and the mourning adult. The change in setting plays a large role in both aspects of his life, the darkness is bing naive and the sunlight is finally gaining knowledge. This is representative of everyone 's oneself. Each person 's experiences shape who they are. Not only the good but also the bad experiences cause you to learn about your innerself. This causes to you to grow as a person
"We all return to memories and dreams . . . again and again; the story we tell of our own life is reshaped around them. But the point doesn't lie there, back in the past, back in the lost time at which they happened; the only point lies in interpretation." -- pg. 5
This short story written by Richard Wright is a very well written, and has a very good plot and keeps the reader entertained throughout. From the dialogue to the characters, who inhabit the world crafted by Wright its very intriguing. On the surface it appears to be just a story about childhood disobedience in general, but the overall theme is much deeper than that.
...a fresh positive mind which helps them to survive. The boy is young and it’s hard for any child his age to understand the reality of life in certain situations that is why the man consistently attempts to help the boy understand what they are going through and what it is going to take to survive.
For this close reading assignment I decided to analyze a passage on page 164. ”The Well, with its slightly torn metal lid, was filled with water to a level above eight feet. The neighbor’s plastic bucket lay at the foot of the silt around the mouth of the well. Boja’s body was floating atop the water, his clothes formed a parachute behind him, bloated like a full balloon. One of his eyes was open and could be seen beneath the surface of the clear water. The other was closed and swollen. His head was held half above the water, resting against the fading bricks of the well, while his light-skinned hands lingered on top of the water as though he was locked in an embrace with another who no one else but he could see.” When the family has just discovered
The story of the “Encounter” expresses different images of light and dark. Thesituation of the image of the old man the two young boys come across on their journey. The adventure of the young boys leads to some confusion to what’s happening throughout their adventures. The boys were talking “with Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s miching”(13). The boys came up with plans to get out of school for their adventure. The boys headed out towards their destination; throughout their adventure they come across uncertainties. The boys come across the world that’s different than what they are used to, such as the old man. The old man seems very confusing for the young boys; the old man talks about young girls saying, “what nice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew” (18). The boys were confused with the statements the old man was saying. Mahony said “he’s a queer old josser” (18). The images of the old man were very negative towards the boys adventure. ...
There is a saying that goes: “having a teenager in the house is like having an infant and an adult as the same time." In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s story, Greasy Lake, the narrator and his friends, Digby and Jeff, are 19 year old boys. The narrator uses intelligent and amusing words to describe his adolescenthood. He and his two friends are on their summer break. They proudly call themselves “bad characters” to impress other teenagers. At first, the narrator really tries to make the readers think that he and his two friends are bad guys: "We wore torn up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine" (Boyle). They go out at night to look for action and girls. However, throughout the story, the narrator makes the readers realize that they are just naive teenage boys. The narrator tells of a specifically threatening night when they experience the unexpected and fight with a truly bad character, try to rape a girl, and see a corpse. The narrator and his friends' immature action causes them to experience and learn a painful, memorable lesson. Boyle’s message to the readers is that the immaturity of adolescence is universal and experimentation results in maturity.
The stranger remarks as to how he has had numerous problems at sea, and had afterwards been held captive by some Indians. He thinks it is wrong that the father of the child has not been named or come forward.
The adult world is a cold and terrifying place. There are robberies, shootings, murders, suicides, and much more. If you were to be a small child, perhaps age 5, and you were to look in at this world, you would never know how bad it actually was, just from a single glance. Children have a small slice of ignorant bliss, which helps to keep them away from the harsh of reality. It isn’t until later, when they encounter something that opens their eyes and shows them, that they truly start to understand the world we live it. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird shows the many differences between the simplicity of being a kid and the tough decisions and problems that adults must face every day.
The father has a hard time following rule five, "Help others." The Biblical reasoning for this rule is, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (King James Version, Luke 6.31). The child continuously wishes to help all people that don’t seem to be bad guys. At one point the man and his son find a man that was struck by lightning the child questions, “Cant we help him? Papa?” (McCarthy 25). The father doesn’t want to give him any help. This conflict is exemplified when the child and father run into a man named "Ely." The man seems weary of the man as shown when it is said, "He looked up the road and down. If this is an ambush he goes first, he said." (McCarthy 83). The child follows the rules better than the man as shown whe...
There are many reasons as to why the man in the well was made up. After the children found this man, they never spoke of the man to anyone other than the other kids that were at the well with them. None of the children’s parents were ever informed of the man that was trapped. The only thing that the children were worried about was learning more about this man. The children asked him simple questions, though. They asked what his name was and if there was water in the well, but they never asked how he got in the well or how long he had been in there.
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
While searching for food, the pair entered the basement of an old house. “Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt.” (McCarthy 110) The father shoved the boy up the stairs, ensuring his son was safe before protecting himself. At this moment in the plot, both boy and father believed they were going to die. Even though the father was scared himself, he always insured his son’s well being was
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of ridding his life of the man's "Evil Eye" (34). Although afflicted with overriding fear and derangement, the narrator still acts with quasi-allegiance toward the old man; however, his kindness may stem more from protecting himself from suspicion of watching the old man every night than from genuine compassion for the old man.
The children couldn’t accept what they thought was so horrible. There was a lot of ignorance and carelessness portrayed throughout this short story. The theme of ungratefulness was revealed in this story; The author depicted how disrespecting someone can inturn feed you with information you may wish you never knew and how someone can do one wrong thing and it immediately erases all the good things a person did throughout their