Man in the Well

Jodi Finchum

Professor McLaughlin

Journal-Friday

6-25-10

            The Man in the Well by Ira Sher was a very interesting and startling story for me to read. I had reservations and questions during the entire story. The main struggle that I encountered while reading the story was the very obvious question of why the children did not get help to get the man out of the well. The whole story was vey peculiar, and makes me wonder about the minds of children, and how much we developed in such a short period of time during our late teens and early twenties. I am also asking myself the question of “what would I do at that age if this scenario happened to me?” I also take into account the idea of peers following peers. It only takes one person to make a slight move one way, and the rest of the group follows. The scary idea within this story is that adults have been proven to take the “sit back and watch” approach just like the children on many occasions, which in my opinion, is silly and can be very harmful. I have reservations to judge though, because you never know what you will actually do when a situation arrives.

            I am concerned at why the man in the well stayed so call. I wonder if he was just hoping that his calmness and limited conversation would keep the children coming back, and hopefully force them to understand that this was a serious situation, and the fact that he kept asking them to get their parents to help would show that he was in danger. On the other hand, I wonder if he would have taken a more forceful stand and possible threatened the children as an older adult, if they may have reacted differently, and possibly let good take over evil thinking and get the man out of the well, or to go get help. Thinking on political and religious terms, the behavior of the kids is nothing less than wrong. It almost seemed as if the man in the well was their “toy”. This is quite evident when the narrator said “It was all I could think about during supper the night before, and then the anticipation in the morning over breakfast” (24). It was very clear that the children didn’t understand that this was a life or death event, and that they were aiding in this man’s death. It’s also significant that the narrator aided parts of his life in sequence with the event of the man in the well. You can understand that he reflected on this event often, and sees it as a somewhat unhappy moment for him.