The Reservoir symbolizes adventure, modernization, and the unknown. The children’s decision to visit the Reservoir is in direct defiance of their parents’ orders, making the journey an act of rebellion. The Reservoir is new in town, and the parents view it with suspicion. The narrator describes the Reservoir as lying at the end of the world––meaning the end of the civilized world. Expectations of civility, respect, and obedience restrict the children, forcing them to remain in the bounds their parents set for them. However, the Reservoir stands outside those bounds, and neither the parents nor the children have a clear understanding of how the Reservoir functions. The narrator imagines it as a monstrous bundle of shadows, while her father worries that running the taps for too long will dry out the Reservoir’s water supply. All the parents fear that their children will drown or hurt themselves if they explore the Reservoir. The parents’ reactions to the Reservoir represent how different generations respond to the unknown: the parents are afraid, while the children are mostly curious.
The unknown is also tied to the future and modernization. The Reservoir has replaced the village’s water pump, and some of the parents’ distrust of it can be traced back to their lack of understanding about the technology of the Reservoir. This adds another generational layer to the contrast between the parents’ fear and the children’s curiosity, since it implies that the younger generation is more willing to embrace modern advances.
However, the parents’ fear is well-founded. Children have drowned at the Reservoir in the past, and the children explicitly ignore the warning on a noticeboard when they play around the Reservoir. The narrator even senses that something dangerous and monstrous is asleep in the Reservoir, but still she insists she is not afraid. This indicates that the unknown is not always safe, which is why exploring it is indeed an adventure. And even once the children have seen the Reservoir, the notion that something lies deeper within it suggests that they still do not grasp the whole truth. In this way, the Reservoir remains the unknown––if the children want to learn more, they will have to plunge deeper into the Reservoir’s depths.
The Reservoir Quotes in The Reservoir
[...] how important it was for birds, animals and people, especially children, to show respect! And that is why for so long we obeyed the command of the grownups and never walked as far as the forbidden Reservoir but were content to return ‘tired but happy’ (as we wrote in our school compositions) answering the question, Where did you walk today? with a suspicion of blackmail, ‘Oh, nearly, nearly to the Reservoir!’
We followed the creek, whacking our sticks, gossiping and singing, but we stopped, immediately silent, when someone — sister or brother — said, ‘Let's go to the Reservoir!’
A feeling of dread seized us. We knew, as surely as we knew our names and our address Thirty-three Stour Street Ohau Otago South Island New Zealand Southern Hemisphere The World, that we would some day visit the Reservoir, but the time seemed almost as far away as leaving school, getting a job, marrying.
And then there was the agony of deciding the right time — how did one decide these things?
Perhaps we would have to sleep there among the pine trees with the owls hooting and the old needle-filled warrens which now reached to the center of the earth where pools of molten lead bubbled, waiting to seize us if we tripped, and then there was the crying sound made by the trees, a sound of speech at its loneliest level where the meaning is felt but never explained, and it goes on and on in a kind of despair, trying to reach a point of understanding. We knew that pine trees spoke in this way.
We were lonely listening to them because we knew we could never help them to say it, whatever they were trying to say, for if the wind who was so close to them could not help them, how could we?
Oh no, we could not spend the night at the Reservoir among the pine trees.
What is it? I wondered. They said it was a lake. I thought it was a bundle of darkness and great wheels which peeled and sliced you like an apple and drew you toward them with demonic force, in the same way that you were drawn beneath the wheels of a train if you stood too near the edge of the platform.
Its nose was ringed which meant that its savagery was tamed, or so we thought; it could be tethered and led; even so, it had once been savage and it kept its pride, unlike the steers who pranced and huddled together and ran like water through the paddocks, made no impression, quarried no massive shape against the sky.
In the Reservoir there was an appearance of neatness which concealed a disarray too frightening to be acknowledged except, without any defense, in moments of deep sleep and dreaming. The little sparkling innocent waves shone now green, now gray, petticoats, lettuce leaves; the trees sighed, and told us to be quiet, hush-sh, as if something were sleeping and should not be disturbed — perhaps that was what the trees were always telling us, to hush-sh in case we disturbed something which must never ever be awakened? What was it? Was it sleeping in the Reservoir? Was that why people were afraid of the Reservoir? Well we were not afraid of it, oh no…
The Reservoir Symbol Timeline in The Reservoir
