The Well Symbol Analysis

The well behind the Das family’s house represents the siblings’ childhood—and their struggle to make sense of it. While they know of the well’s existence from a young age, they almost never see it: they are told to avoid it for safety reasons, it’s located in an unkempt part of the garden behind the house, and most importantly, it has a dark past. The family’s cow fell inside by accident one night and drowned, but its carcass was too heavy to pull out, so the family had no choice but to leave it inside to decompose. (This is particularly sinister because cows are holy to Hindus like the Das family.) One day, Bim and Tara wandered over to the well while playing as children, looked inside, and saw nothing but murky black water. They associate the well with death: Aunt Mira imagines dying there and Bim dreams of finding her aunt’s body floating there; Bim later comments that her dreams have been lost “down at the bottom of the well” and jokes about dying there, too.

Just as the dark secret of indifferent parents and an unhappy childhood forever shapes the siblings’ lives but often aren’t things they’re consciously aware of, the dark secret of the cow’s death hides somewhere beneath the murky surface of the well. Notably, the well itself reveals nothing about its history or true depth, just as the siblings cannot truly understand their childhoods. In the present-day parts of the novel, the adult siblings gaze into their past much as Bim and Tara gazed into the well as children. They grasp for these hidden secrets but realize that memory is imperfect and the people they most need to hear from (their deceased parents) are already gone. The most they can do is speculate, compare stories, and build new relationships in the future.