64 pages • 2 hours read
Watt KeyTerror at Bottle Creek
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Swamp
The swamp is highly symbolic throughout the novel, reflecting Cort’s struggle with his sense of belonging. As a child, it felt like home, a place filled with happy memories of helping his father in his work as a river guide. However, after his mother left, mostly because of his father’s stubborn dedication to a life on the river and swamp, Cort’s view of the swamp begins to change. Now it is a place of isolation and loss, and he is increasingly aware of how much his lifestyle alienates him from other children his own age.
The swamp shifts from a familiar and welcoming place to somewhere unfamiliar and threatening. This is first seen when Cort nearly gets bitten by an alligator, something he should have known to avoid. However, it becomes even more pronounced when the storm hits. Familiar landmarks are submerged underwater or washed away, and the usually-hidden animals are now watching from the treetops or fighting for higher ground. Struggling to survive this now harsh and dangerous world, Cort becomes even more sure that he does not want to live there anymore. However, by the time he has survived various perils, reunited with his father, and rescued the girls, he realizes that he can still love the river and the swamp while enjoying aspects of a “normal” teenage existence.
The Houseboat
Like the swamp, the houseboat Cort lives on used to represent a place of familiarity and safety but has been changed by his parents’ separation. Now, it represents the instability of their family. This is first demonstrated in Cort’s father’s inability to decide what to do to secure the boat against the incoming storm. Still too distracted by trying to win back Cort’s mother, he does not pay the task enough attention, just as he does not pay enough attention to Cort. As a result, the boat is improperly tied up, and when Cort looks at it through the storm, it is in danger of filling with water and coming loose.
In this moment, the boat mirrors the relationship between the father and son who live on it: unstable and in danger of falling apart. In fact, it is the improperly secured boat breaking free that sets Cort on his dangerous journey, again demonstrating that it is his father’s neglect that forces him into that position. Soon, Cort must abandon the boat—his home since he was a child—and go out into the swamp to save himself, Liza, and Francie. This symbolizes the way Cort is forced to accept the loss of his childhood home and move out into the darkness of the unknown, into an adult world of responsibility.
Having survived the ordeal and regained the support of his father, Cort now agrees that they should build a brick house on the Stovall’s land. This moment mirrors how the unstable houseboat—and the unstable family dynamic that it housed—has been washed away, and Cort and his father are recommitting to building a new, stable home and family.
The Storm
The storm represents the turbulent events that have struck Cort’s family, something that has upset his previous quiet life and that he must struggle to survive. At the beginning of the novel, the storm is just a threat, in the background but approaching rapidly, and the tensions between Cort and his father are similarly present but not immediately threatening. However, these tensions come to a head as the storm strikes, and both the tensions and the storm go on threaten Cort’s life, because his father has failed to take responsibility, either for looking after his son or for preparing for the storm.
The eye of the hurricane mirrors the moment of calm the children experience when they climb the tree at the Bottle Creek Indian Mounds. This parallel reminds Cort that although things seem safe, they are about to get worse. The eye of the hurricane foreshadows the impending snake bite, Cort’s dangerous journey past the boar and the alligators, and his near fatal collapse in the half-floating refrigerator. By the end of the novel, the storm has passed and so has the “storm” within Cort’s life: He has survived the threats to his relationships—the changes and upheavals, the familiar becoming unfamiliar—and finds that life continues and peace has returned once more.
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By Watt Key
