The Man in the Well

Aria Bashizadeh Fakhar
Journal 3
The Man in the Well
While I was reading this, I kept commenting to myself: What in the WORLD are these kids thinking? Why in the hell are they doing this to this poor man? When the story started, and the kids claim that they decided not to help him, I was dumbstruck. I was at a loss for words. Why? -- Is all that I could ask. When the man exclaimed “God, get me out. I’ve been here for days”, I felt a twinge of pain for the man, even though this is fiction, I felt really bad. His desperateness is evident throughout, as he knows that it’s the same kids coming back to the well over and over, and toying with him, he always asks for help, and for the children to seek help for him. The kids, used to obeying authority started to run to get help, but stopped and came back and started to ask stupid questions. It’s strange, they know that it’s an adult, but when they are in the position of authority, and are vicariously in charge of this man’s life, they seem unaffected, and see no rush to come to his aid. The first question they ask him is “What’s your name” and claim that it “seemed like the most natural question”. However, I feel that if I were there, I would ask him how he had gotten there in the first place, and oddly enough, they seem to have never really asked him that at all.
The kids are clever liars, toying with the man, claiming that someone is coming to help him and claiming that they couldn’t find a ladder or rope when in fact they didn’t even care to look in the first place. Why do they do this? I think they think it’s a game and as young as innocent as they are, they don’t see the severity of the issue. But how could they not? They knew that he was tired, thirsty and hungry. They thought the little scraps of food that they stole away from their houses were enough for him, but clearly it wasn’t. They seem to lack any sort of sympathy and empathy for the man.
Upon asking multiple times what the man’s name is, and his response of “What do you think my name is?” gives me the impression that the kids know him in some way, and that the narrator’s parents also know him, as indicated by his mother’s cries at night and his father’s endless mumblings, and “There was a feeling to those days, months actually, that I can’t describe without resorting to the man in the well, as if through a great whispering, like a gathering of clouds, or the long sound, the turbulent wreck of the ocean.” Actually, now, I am convinced that they knew the man in the well, but why in the world did he not tell them his name? It could have been the end of the situation, where instead of an anonymous man in the well, it would have been someone important to the narrator.
“We all watched him, trembling, our faces the faces I had seen pasted on the spectators in the freak tent when the circus had come to town.” It was a show to them! It was a once in a lifetime situation, and they decided to sit and watch it instead of doing anything. There’s no shame, no sympathy and no urge to help, just curiosity, plain, unadulterated curiosity that these kids are exhibiting.
The end? I don’t understand the end. It rained, as the man had asked about a few times, and he finally got it. Did the kids think that he was somehow able to rise with the water and get out? I don’t know.
Now, what I think the story is about, is how powerful kids’ curiosity can be, and their unwillingness to help those whom they can’t see. But it doesn’t make sense, we have stories like Lassie, a dog nonetheless, who helps little kids who have fallen into a well, but these kids who can actually speak, don’t tell their parents of the impending situation. I just don’t get it.