Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Reservoir, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Maturity
Independence vs. Obedience
Fear, Curiosity, and Exploration
Friendship and Loneliness
Nature vs Modernization
Summary
Analysis
The children of a New Zealand village love to play in the wilderness around the local gully, though the village has some disdain for the wildlife. The village agrees that respect is important for “birds, animals and people, especially children.” Because they value respect, the children follow the orders of their parents and do not explore the local Reservoir, which stands past the gully “at the end of the world.” They go on long walks together, and when their suspicious parents ask where the children went, they always respond, “Oh, nearly, nearly to the Reservoir!”
As the backdrop for most of their games, the wilderness plays a significant role in the children’s lives. Their connection to nature is limited, however, by their parents’ orders about how far the children can explore. The village adults’ emphasis on respect does not seem to bother the children, despite the fact that they themselves are arguably disrespected by the notion that animals and children should be respectful. This belief dehumanizes children and places wildlife within the human hierarchy of respect, too.
Themes
The Reservoir replaced a water pump and has brought running water to the town. When the narrator is careless with the water taps, her father scolds her, expressing his concern that the Reservoir might run dry. This frightens the narrator, who is afraid of dying of thirst if the Reservoir dries up. The narrator’s mother tells her the Reservoir gives pure, “treated” water. The narrator doesn’t know what “treated” means, and imagines that “during the night men in light-blue uniforms” drag corpses to the Reservoir “to dissolve dead bodies and prevent the decay of teeth.”
The newness of the Reservoir indicates that the story is set in the mid-20th century, when developments in water treatment began to expand to rural areas. It also introduces a theme of modernization that runs throughout the story, and it stands in contrast with the wilderness that the narrator has emphasized so far. The mother’s explanation in this passage that the Reservoir gives the village pure water shows how the village appreciates the Reservoir, but the father’s concern that the Reservoir might run dry reveals that the villages don’t have a full understanding of how a reservoir works. This puts the adults on a surprisingly similar level to their children, whose imagined versions of the Reservoir paints it as a terrifying unknown.
Themes
The parents of the town discuss the Reservoir. They claim children have drowned there, and they all agree “no child […] ought to be allowed near the Reservoir.” The children obey this command, and instead play around the village. They walk along the gully, wading in the “untreated cast-off creek which we loved.” The children know the land well––where the water is safe for paddling, where eels and weeds lurk, where to jump, and all the “dangers, limitations, and advantages.”
The Reservoir continues to be presented as a symbol of danger and the unknown. The creek, on the other hand, is untreated, and the children consider it safe and familiar. Despite their familiarity with the creek, they acknowledge its hazards, which shows that even well-known features of nature are not without risks. The children’s awareness of the creek’s risks, and their ability to navigate these risks, prove that they are more capable than their parents believe them to be.
Themes
The children also know “the moods of the creek,” which often changes its course. The creek’s course is a source of discussion and reverence from the children and their parents. When the creek is “high-flow,” churning with turbulence and mud, it is full of waste from “whatever evil which ‘they,’ the authorities, had decided to purge” from the Reservoir.
The children know the creek well enough to follow its fickle moods, which again emphasizes their connection to nature and nature’s resistance to being defined. The creek has been affected by the construction of the Reservoir, which shows how modernization reshapes nature, often harmfully. The Reservoir also enters the hierarchy of humans and nature here: the mysterious authorities are the only entity that can control the Reservoir, and the narrator sees them as a faceless entity that casts evil from the Reservoir into the children's beloved creek. This negative interpretation of authority contradicts the importance of respect for authority that the village expects of children.
Themes
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The children continue to obey their parents and avoid the Reservoir as the school year comes to an end. The summer is long and hot, and the children quickly break or lose interest in their Christmas presents. To pass the tedious days, the children spread rumors. Between hours of games and swimming, the children tell outlandish stories about sharks and the sea drying up. They also play games “mimick[ing] grown-up life, loving and divorcing each other.”
Even in the boring, hot days of summer, the children do not break their parents’ rules. Instead, the friends create their own society in imitation of adulthood. Their overly simplistic understanding of grown-up life emphasizes their immaturity and naivete. Their enjoyment of rumors also mirrors their parents’ tendency to gossip with neighbors, specifically about the dangers of the Reservoir. While the adults gossip about the Reservoir and the children prefer more dramatic stories about sharks and the world burning up, both the adults and the children like to gossip about catastrophe. This highlights how the children’s immaturity does not separate them from adults as much as the adults might expect.
Themes
The summer heat drains the life from the children and the dried-out world around them. The exhaustion is so extreme that the children are relieved to realize that school will soon reopen. The school year seems so far away that the narrator assumes the children have “forgotten everything [they] had learned, how frightening, thrilling and strange it would all seem!” As the children wait for school to start, they look forward to the school’s shady interior. Before lessons can begin, however, an epidemic of Infantile Paralysis sweeps the village. The schools do not reopen, and the children have to receive their schoolwork by mail.
The heat is so oppressive and exhausting that the children no longer enjoy their games or their walks along the creek. Their desperation for something new foreshadows the possibility that the children will need to seek out a new adventure if their need for stimulation is not satisfied. The narrator’s nervous excitement for the new school year also speaks to how enthusiastically the children greet new experiences, reinforcing their characterization as curious and energetic. Their excitement is crushed, however, when disease closes the school, which robs the children of the break from monotony that they need.
Themes
The children are so bored by the heat and their lessons by post that they decide to walk by the creek. The narrator’s mother reminds the narrator not to go to the Reservoir, but the children “dismiss the warning.” The children like to watch courting couples and make jokes about kissing and sex. They wonder if the young men in the couples will use a “frenchie,” or condom, because if he does not, his girlfriend will “start having a baby and be forced to get rid of it by drinking gin.” However, on this day there are no couples, so the children follow the creek until someone suggests they go to the Reservoir.
The casual dismissal of the mother’s warning marks a shift in the children’s respect for their parents. Infantile Paralysis (polio) has disrupted the status quo they usually adhere to, and their frustration and boredom have undermined the children’s respect for that status quo. The children’s amusement about courting couples is another instance of their fascination with adult topics they don’t understand. The children know a condom prevents babies, but they do not understand the nuances of sex, pregnancy, or abortion. The children are in desperate need of an activity, and the lack of fun to be had with courting couples proves to be a breaking point.
Themes
The children are unsure. They have always known they would someday visit the Reservoir, but that day seemed far away and they aren’t sure this is the right time. The narrator “timidly” says that the children have been told not to go, but they decide to go to the Reservoir anyway. It is a long way there, and the narrator wonders if the walk will take all day and night, and the children will have to sleep among the pine trees, with hooting owls, old warrens “waiting to seize us if we tripped,” and the crying of the trees. The narrator believes pine trees speak to each other. Listening to them makes the children lonely because “we could never help them say [...] whatever they were trying to say.”
The revelation that the children have always known they would visit the Reservoir calls into question how genuine their respect for their parents has been. They have obeyed their parents’ wishes up to this point, but they always knew one day that obedience would end. The narrator shares this feeling, but she notes that their parents would object. The narrator does not often voice her own opinion separately from the group, and when she does so here, she is timid and easily convinced to change her mind. Shortly after this moment of individuality, the narrator muses about the loneliness of the pine trees. Though the pine trees whisper to the children, their speech is incomprehensible. This is presented in contrast to the easy communication among the children, who usually act and think as one. The lonely pine trees are part of a frightening forest landscape, whose lurking warrens and hooting owls are much scarier than the familiar creek in the gully.
Themes
The children discuss Billy Whittaker and the Green Feather gang, who went to the Reservoir one afternoon. Billy Whittaker got an iron lung two years ago after a bout of Infantile Paralysis, and all the children envy “the glamour of an iron lung.” One of the children, in a voice “trying to sound bossy like our father,” urges the others onward toward the Reservoir. They move on, waving sticks and trying to make them into musical instruments. Their efforts fail, much to their frustration. The narrator wonders, frustrated, “why [can’t] we ever make anything out of the bits of the world lying about us?”
Once again, the children’s love of gossip emerges. This time, their discussion reveals they do not take Infantile Paralysis seriously, and they care more about the “glamour” of the iron lung that one of their classmates got after suffering from the disease. An iron lung is a feat of modern medicine, and it represents the ultimate fusion of nature (the human body) with technology (a metal organ)—suggesting that such a fusion can have benign effects, though a crippling disease is what makes this technology necessary. The child who tries to mimic their father’s authority recalls how the children enjoy imitating what they perceive as the core tenets of adult life; this suggests that the children see bossiness as an intrinsic feature of adulthood. As the children continue on and fail to make instruments out of sticks, their desire to make useful things out of nature parallels how the authorities of the Reservoir aim to dominate nature and make practical use of it.
Themes
An airplane passes, and all the children pause to look at it. Then they continue to the Reservoir. The narrator wonders what exactly the Reservoir is. People say that it is a lake, but the narrator thinks it is “a bundle of darkness” whose wheels can “dr[a]w you toward them with demonic force.” The children pass wild plants and reach the end of the gully, where they encounter new barbed-wire fences and signs against trespassers.
The children’s interest in the passing airplane reaffirms their interest in the technological advances they are witnessing as they grow up. That interest becomes fear of the Reservoir, as the narrator (once again thinking for herself, not as part of the unit of children) imagines the Reservoir’s wheels as demonic weapons. As the children get closer to the Reservoir, the replacement of wild plants with barbed wire underscores that they are nearing an area where humans have conquered nature.
Themes
As they venture onward, the children come across a bull paddock. The bull inside has a ring through its nose, indicating that it has been tamed, but “it had once been savage and it kept its pride.” The bull stands alone in its paddock. The children recall a neighbor, Mr. Bennet, who was gored by his own tame bull, and when one of them notices the bull is pawing the ground preparing to charge, the children flee. After regaining their courage, they move around the paddock and keep heading for the Reservoir.
Though the children assume that a domesticated bull with a ringed nose will pose no threat to them, the natural savagery of this wild animal has not been entirely tamed. The failure of the bull’s owner to erase its “pride” represents how nature cannot be fully restrained by humans.
Themes
The children’s path brings them back along the creek, and though they express relief, the creek seems to have changed while it disappeared by the bull-paddock. It “foam[s] in a way we did not recognize as belonging to our special creek,” and they realize “we had suddenly lost possession of our creek.” The children are upset, so to cheer themselves up they wave their sticks in the air, which successfully lets them “forg[e]t our dismay.”
The children are distressed to find the creek has changed in their absence. They think of the creek as theirs, but the creek’s surprising change in current and water quality shows that the creek was never theirs––it is a force of nature that cannot be tamed by humans. However, the children quickly forget their distress by simply waving sticks, which speaks to their immaturity.
Themes
One of the children says that it’s getting late, and they remind each other that the sun doesn’t seem to move during the summer until people stop looking at it. This leads to a discussion of the tropics. The children correct each other about sand and snails until one of them sprains an ankle, after which they “quarrel” over how to pronounce “sprained,” “ambulance,” and “hospital.”
The children’s belief that the sun only moves when they stop looking at it calls to mind childish games like “Red Light, Green Light.” It also echoes the childish belief that the world responds to one person’s actions. The children’s immaturity and youthful energy are further emphasized by their rapid changes in discussion. The themes of injury and illness that run through their quarrels also hint at the dark undertones of Infantile Paralysis and drowning that haunt the children’s lives.
Themes
While the children bicker, the creek goes on high-flow. Their discomfort vanishes, and the children are confident this is their “same old creek.” They approach a wide spread of pine trees, staying close to the creek until it “desert[s]” them. Between the trees, they find a “vast” and “dazzling” body of water––the Reservoir. The children cry out in excitement.
The children overlook the potential dangers of high-flow and any implications it might carry about the Reservoir, instead focusing on their relief that the creek has become familiar again. Their relief is short-lived, however, because once they reach the Reservoir, the creek abandons them once again. The pine trees, previously symbols of isolation and anxiety, surround the Reservoir. Their presence suggests something dark about the Reservoir, despite its dazzling surface.
Themes
The Reservoir appears calm and quiet. There are no birds, and the only sound is the sighing of the pine trees. The narrator perceives that the Reservoir’s “appearance of neatness” hides a lack of order. The trees’ sighing seems to hush the children, “as if something were sleeping and should not be disturbed.” The narrator wonders what is sleeping in the Reservoir, and if that thing is why people are afraid of it. The children, however, are no longer afraid of the Reservoir. They climb through the fence and swing on trees, ignoring the noticeboard that says DANGER, RESERVOIR.
The contrast between order and disarray reflects the order between human civilization and natural wilderness. Despite the Reservoir’s apparent usefulness and beauty, its depths still hold something beyond human comprehension that even the pine trees are afraid of. Though the narrator is wise enough to sense this danger, she declares that the children are not afraid of the Reservoir and joins her friends in playing around it. Throughout their journey, the children have swung between fear and excitement, and now, despite the obvious hazards, they have settled on excitement. In fact, the narrator’s insistence that the children are not afraid suggests that they approach the Reservoir to prove their courage to each other and themselves, which positions fear as the motivating factor for exploration.
Themes
The children play around the Reservoir, regarding it “possessively and delightedly,” until it seems to be getting dark. One of the children starts to run, and everyone else follows toward the creek. They recognize the creek is no longer theirs, though they wish it still was. The children have no idea what time it is, and they imagine darkness overtaking them, forcing them to sleep on the banks of the creek that is no longer theirs, surrounded by wild plants and dead animals. They wonder if the eels will emerge from the creek and shapeshift into various threats. Their fears grow––maybe the eels will give the children Infantile Paralysis, trapping them in the woods where no one would find them or bring them an iron lung.
The children have accepted that they don’t have possession of the creek, but that has not taught them not to try to own nature: instead, they turn their eyes on the Reservoir. When they lose track of time, the children’s fears return, and all the threats of nature loom as they run home. As their fears spiral, the children worry about Infantile Paralysis, revealing that they understand the severity of the disease—though they still view Billy Whittaker’s iron lung as a source of envy.
Themes
Finally, the children return home, out of breath and scratched up from their journey. “How strange,” the narrator thinks, as she realizes the sun is still in the same place in the sky. The children wonder if they should tell their parents where they have been, but “the question [is] decided for [them].” The narrator’s mother greets the children at the door saying, “I hope you didn’t go anywhere near the Reservoir,” and the narrator’s father looks up from his newspaper to echo the same sentiment. The children say nothing, instead sharing a mutual disdain and amusement for the fear of the “out-of-date” parents.
The contrast between the children returning home physically scratched and the sun still being in the same spot in the sky reflects that while the children have changed on their journey, the world around them is still the same. The fact that the children wonder whether they should confess where they have been also suggests they still hold some respect for their parents, though that respect is shaken when the narrator realizes she has overcome a fear her parents still hold. Being afraid of the Reservoir is “out-of-date,” and describing it as such hints at a generational divide between the adults, who worry about the risks of modernization, and the children, whose curiosity and friendship have allowed them to become more comfortable with technology—though perhaps still naïve about its dangers.
Themes
