A Secret Lost In The Water (Essay Sample)

A secret lost in the water is a masterpiece made by Roch Carrier. Roch Carrier is a Canadian born on the 13th of May in 1937. According to him, his inspiration in writing the novel was due to issues in a family when it comes into approaching tradition.

The setting of this story starts off in a small community village wherein everyone is acquainted with each other. The general mood of this story is gloomy, troubling, and upsetting whereas the general tone or atmosphere generates happy and cheery ones.

Like what was said earlier, the story is about a father and his son. The conflict of the story all began when the father thought of himself as useless by the son which made him decide to teach his son in the way of “dowsing”, a technique which was used for searching underground components such as water, and minerals through the use of forked stick which is then utilized in observing changes in the direction of water. Unfortunately, the son had other plans and did not like the way the old did the work and so, he became a writer. After some time, realization hit that he no longer knew how to use the gift passed on by his father (known as dowsing) since he never found out how his father found the water since the son was too busy trying to modernize his way of living.

Now what does this have to tell us? At the conclusion of the story, the farmer had stated that there is conflict between the new and old generations, and through the traditional message of, “nowadays, fathers can’t pass anything on to the next generation.” Which is visibly seen, especially in highly advancing countries who would much rather undergo further advancement and innovation than stick with a traditional setup.

Let us talk about the conflict of this story. There was no exact breath clenching, over climactic conflict in this story, but rather a simple person versus self. Who and when was this? Well, it was between the son and himself. As he grew up, he began struggling with his own conscience the moment he found out he could no longer dowse or “use the gift his father passed on to him.” And this may also be seen between the father and himself, he struggled with his confidence. He lost track of the fact that he was his father and loss his “use” or so he claimed. He did decide to teach his son the ways of dowsing as compensation for his uselessness.

And to sum it all up, this story was all about the father who taught he was no longer useful, especially to his son and decided to teach his son dowsing which was relevantly what he did to earn a living at his time. The son, however, had other plans with his life and wanted to achieve greatness via being a writer. As time went by for the boy, he started struggling with the fact that he no longer had the capacity to do dowsing and at that point, it was a never ending conflict for him.

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