The children in “The Reservoir” often act and think as one entity, and the narrator uses the pronoun “we” more often than “I” to describe how the story progresses. The rapidly-paced conversations the children have throughout the story rarely have dialogue tags. On the rare occasion the speaker is noted, the speaker is simply called “someone,” and one dialogue tag refers to the speaker as “someone––brother or sister.” The bond between the children is so strong that the children’s individual identities do not separate them from each other. Rather, they are all each other’s brothers and sisters.
The narrator is not omnipotent, but she frequently narrates what the whole group is thinking, which indicates that the friends are close enough to virtually read each other’s minds. This sort of intuitive understanding is contrasted with the pine trees surrounding the Reservoir. Like the children, the pine trees speak to each other, but the trees lack the understanding that the children share. Though the pines whisper and sigh, their speech is “at its loneliest level where the meaning is felt but never explained.” By highlighting this communication as the “loneliest” possible form, Frame implies that the key to friendship is not simply conversation, but being understood.
When contrasted to the loneliness of trees, the children’s friendship becomes framed as a privilege––a privilege they do not try to help the pine trees share. Of course, pine trees can’t literally speak or befriend one another, but the personification of the trees suggests that genuine community isn’t universally enjoyed, and that human loneliness is never far away, whether we acknowledge it or not. Indeed, the children don’t bother to try to understand the trees, assuming “if the wind who was so close to them could not help,” they never could. Yet, when the children reach the Reservoir itself, the narrator describes the trees as “subjected to the wind.” Framing the wind as an oppressive force against the trees makes the children’s obliviousness less excusable. The children, despite being oppressed by their parents like the trees are oppressed by the wind, share a bond that the trees do not, and it is that friendship that allows them to overcome their parents’ prohibition and visit the Reservoir. The children’s naive carelessness leads them to disregard the lonely pines, hinting that friendship is not equally granted to everyone, perhaps especially those who need it most.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Friendship and Loneliness ThemeTracker
Friendship and Loneliness 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…
