“The Reservoir” is a story about children, and also about childishness. The narrative emphasizes the innocence of its young protagonists––but it also points out that adults are not always wiser or more mature than the children they seek to control. By turning conventions of maturity on their head, Janet Frame explores the nuances of childhood innocence while also granting agency and respect to the children in her story. The children are fascinated with “adult” experiences they don’t understand, from giggling at the “courting couples” in town to playing games in which they “mimic grown-up life.” However, the children know more than their parents give them credit for. While the children’s parents warn them about dangers throughout the story, the narrator explicitly notes that all her friends know “the dangers, limitations and advantages” of the gully.
The story continues to subvert expectations of maturity by depicting the adults and children as equally immature in their arguments over word pronunciation. Frame links the arguments with similar words, describing both as “quarrels,” which highlights the trivial nature of the debates and emphasizes that adults can often be as petty as children. Moreover, when the children finally break their parents’ most explicit rule and explore the Reservoir, their youthful innocence lets them see the beauty of the Reservoir instead of the dangers. When they return home and see their parents’ worry about the Reservoir, the narrator remarks, “How out-of-date they were! They were actually afraid!” These almost condescending last lines portray the children in a position of greater knowledge and courage than their parents. The parents are right to be worried, since children have drowned at the Reservoir in the past, but despite their inexperience, the children have proven themselves to be capable and self-sufficient. By contrasting adults and children in this way, Frame argues that children’s understanding of the world may not be complete, but they should be acknowledged and respected for their unique perspectives.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Maturity ThemeTracker
Maturity Quotes in The Reservoir
And for so long we obeyed our mother's command, on our favorite walks along the gully simply following the untreated cast-off creek which we loved and which flowed day and night in our heads in all its detail [...] We knew where the water was shallow and could be paddled in, where forts could be made from the rocks; we knew the frightening deep places where the eels lurked and the weeds were tangled in gruesome shapes; we knew the jumping places, the mossy stones with their dangers, limitations, and advantages; the sparkling places where the sun trickled beside the water, upon the stones; the bogs made by roaming cattle, trapping some of them to death; their gaunt telltale bones; the little valleys with their new growth of lush grass where the creek had ‘changed its course,’ and no longer flowed.
We swam. We wore bathing togs all day. We gave up cowboys and ranches; and baseball and sledding; and "those games" where we mimicked grown-up life, loving and divorcing each other, kissing and slapping, taking secret paramours when our husband was working out of town. Everything exhausted us.
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?
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.
We saw [the creek] now before us, and hailed it with more relief than we felt, for [...] it had undergone change, it had adopted the shape, depth, mood of foreign water, foaming in a way we did not recognize as belonging to our special creek, giving no hint of its depth. It seemed to flow close to its concealed bed, not wishing any more to communicate with us. We realized with dismay that we had suddenly lost possession of our creek. Who had taken it? Why did it not belong to us any more? We hit our sticks in the air and forgot our dismay. We grew cheerful.
