A Secret Lost In The Water Theme Essay

The theme of this short story is that important life lessons and family traditions can be learned from a child’s parents but that knowledge can be lost when the child chooses to forget what they have learned. The visual that I have drawn is a scene features a father who is trying to talk to his son about their family traditions and values. However, the son does not really care about what his father is saying and continues to do school work on his laptop. Some visual elements in my scene that help convey the theme includes: the laptop, the family cookbook/albums on the ground as well as the demeanor of the son. Firstly, I have depicted the phrase: “in through one ear and out the other” in this picture. As the father is speaking, his words seem to go in through one of the …show more content…
the narrator in “A Secret Lost in the Water”). In addition to that, the quote: “It’s something my own father taught me. It isn’t something you can learn in school and it isn’t useless; a man can get along without writing and arithmetic but he can never get along without water” (p.105, Sightlines 10) is an example of the theme in this short story. This quote shows that there are many more lessons to learn in life than those you may learn in school and the people who may pass on these important life lessons to you are your parents (rather than teachers). The narrator’s father says the lesson that he can teach his son isn’t something that is taught academically, however, it is very important for survival; since everyone requires water to live. This is evidence of the theme because it shows that important life lessons (such as how to find water) can be learned and passed down from parent to child. Another example of the theme is when the narrator attempts to squeeze the alder branch many years later as an adult, he cannot make the branch writhe like when he was with his