Week 1-journal 3

Thoughts While Reading Ira Sher’s “The Man in the Well”

Page 21: The opening paragraph is very matter of fact, the narrator was 9 when they found a man in a well. Although the writing is direct, it also expresses uncertainty. The narrator cannot remember precisely what they were doing (“playing hide and go seek or something”). The narrator is obviously reflecting on past events and she cannot remember the exact thought process behind their reaction to the man; the narrator uses a lot of subjunktiv case. Certain details in the story seem symbolic (the fact that the kids only heard the man but never saw him) that it reads a bit like a parable despite the mundane setting. I’m wondering what the significance is that the kids only get half way to Arthur’s house before slowing down and returning to the man in the well. Is the author connecting the action of the children to wider societal tendencies?

Page 22: Although this text makes me anxious for someone to help the poor man in the well, the cool curiosity of the children seems natural. The kids seem naïve to the direness of the situation; they are curious but not empathetic. I am kind of shocked that Wendy lied telling the man in the well that the other children had gone for help. I can’t help but imagine what I would have done as a child in such a situation. Like the narrator, “I tried to picture him. I tried to imagine the gesture of his hand…” etc. Like the kids who never see the man in the well, as a reader, I am likewise unable to see the man.

Page 23: The fact that the kids were anxious not be noticed “in particular” by the man in the well reminds me of what I mentioned earlier: The kids seem to be stand ins for people in general society who are unwilling to step forward. Perhaps it’s my awareness of this class and it’s general themes that makes me so willing to believe that this story is about wider societal tendencies. I imagine the man in the well is black and the children are white, although there is no evidence in the text for such a statement.

Page 25: The name question keeps popping up again and again in this short story. At first it “seemed like the most natural question” (21) but now “the question humiliated us with its simplicity” (25). I’m not really sure what that change means. Obviously a name holds a certain power that the children are aware and fearful of (no one wants the man in the well to know their name). The guessing-name game the children played with the man in the well reminds me a little of Rumpelstilskin…but the situation is completely different. I think the guessing game is a way for the man in the well to get the children to think of him as a human. The narrator is enraged when the well man guesses his name and “wanted to throw stones, dirt down the well to crush out his voice” (26). Did the kids think that it was better to let a man die then to be associated with their behavior toward the man? I don’t know what the kids wanted or feared but it seems a lot more complicated than a fear of punishment.