The story starts off with a man in distress which, of course, led me to believe that there would be some sort of rescue involved. However, as soon as I red the line, “I think it’s important we decided not to help him,” I knew this was a different type of story. In one line, the ending is foreshadowed, and this fictional man’s fate is sealed. The fact that there was really no reason for the children’s decision to act asympathetically threw me for a loop. At this point I was wondering what they planned to do instead of rescue this man. Did they plan on gaining something from his dire situation? I immediately feel sorry for the man because the kids could have saved him in an instant by telling their parents, who could have devised a plan.
To my surprise, the kids really wanted nothing from the man in the well. They just took turns asking him questions about nothing in particular such as, “What’s your name?” or “Can you see the sky?” At this point I thought to myself, “What do they want to know these things for?” At first I thought maybe they were trying to gain an intellectual advantage over the man (to go along with their physical advantage) in order to feel better than him. But the more I read on, the more I thought that they were just kids who were bored and were asking questions that kids would ask a stranger.
Throughout this first day, the kids seem to be testing the man to see what they can get him to say. However, he refuses to answer any questions and only asks them to go get help, that is until Wendy says all the others have gone to tell their parents about the situation (which they have not), whereupon he answers her question. Bingo. Now the kids know how to manipulate this man into telling them what they want to hear. Now the story is starting to take form. They come back the next day and bring food and water to the man in the well, which says to me that they intend to keep him down there as a form of amusement unlike any game they’d ever played. Again, I sympathize with the man because of the relative ease it would take to get him out of the well, but as the story goes on I actually start to wonder about his innocence. For instance, he refuses to even give the children his name, even after they ask him repeatedly. To me this seems not only like a stupid move, because they are his only chance of survival and it would be wise to go along with their game, but it also seems suspicious. Why wouldn’t you want someone to know who you are if you need help? To me that says maybe this man is a criminal or has something to hide.
The huge turn in the plot comes when Wendy slips up and mentions Aaron’s name, the first time any of the children had “broken one of the rules.” Now the man in the well has something to use against his “captors.” When he calls out to Aaron by name, everything changes. Aaron states everyone’s name, so that they are all on an even playing field and are all equally guilty. Once the man starts trying to use their names to coax the children into helping him, the game has lost its appeal and the children leave.
Looking back at the story, it’s hard to see a point to it but perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye. From the narrator’s brief mentions of his family, especially his mother, I can tell that something else is going on. His mother’s constant sobbing and his father’s “stubborn murmur” say to me that perhaps his mother knows the man in the well. The father’s indifference say to me that he doesn’t know the man, which suggests that perhaps (and this might be a long shot in the dark) his mother was having an affair with this mysterious man before he went missing, and is now grieving for her loss. So in a sense, the children’s lack of action can either be seen as inherently ruthless (as children can be at times) if the man is innocent, or somehow a positive turn of events, refusing to help someone who doesn’t “deserve” it.
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