A Secret Lose In The Water

The short story “A secret lost in the water“written by Roch Carrier, holds a deeper meaning to it, than one can skim through and see. After carefully reading the story, I believe the theme of this short story is the significance of the water. As the story progresses, we find the talent that the narrator states that only his father mastered, focused on finding water, by using a mere alder branch. When the father passes this talent or gift to his disengaged son, as the son grows old the son forgets his father’s talent. The symbol, Water has several unique meanings to it: one being, not all fathers’s gifts can be passed down to his child, the other being water is crucial to mankind, and finally the gift of the father is lost in the water.

When the narrator is given a chance to remember and master the talent passed down by his father in his early childhood, he struggles to perform the secret. As the narrator struggles to hear the gushing water and the branch to writhe, a fellow farmer says “nowadays fathers can’t pass on anything to the next generation.” This quote is very powerful, since it directly points to the moral of the story “not all fathers can pass gifts or talents to the sons. In addition the farmer too experiences this moral, for he has the finest farm in the area, and his children didn’t want to inherit the farm which their father spent his whole preparing for them.

At point in the story the father of the narrator says “a man can get along without arithmetic, but he can never get along without water.” This statement explains how vital water is to mankind. No man can stand without whole three to four days. Carrier relates the crucial significance of water to mankind as the gift of father is priceless to his son. Also in the same scene the father says that he leant this gift that he is famous by one and only his