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.
Character Analysis
Cort
Cort is a 13-year-old boy living with his father and his pet dog, Catfish, on a houseboat in Carolina. His mother left the family home six months ago, and Cort resents her for this. Struggling to deal with the loss of the stable home and family life he enjoyed, he blames her for leaving and claims to never want to see her again. Part of his resentment is because of the effect of her departure upon Cort’s father, who is now distracted and not looking after himself or Cort, turning up late for work and hardly eating. Cort sees this as his mother’s fault, and he resents his father for trying to win her back. These changes isolate Cort, who finds that Catfish is the only one who makes him feel less lonely.
The upheaval in his private life also affects Cort’s relationship with the place he calls home. While he previously loved living on the river and learning about the swamp with his father, he begins to believe that this knowledge is useless. Making this worse is his father’s insistence that his life on the swamp led to Cort’s mother leaving. Therefore, Cort is worried about recreating the same issues with Liza, the neighbor he has begun to develop feelings for. However, after her own father’s death, she has begun to move away from the swamp lifestyle, and Cort is afraid that he will lose her. As a result of these issues, Cort is also starting to lose interest in the swamp and feel ashamed of his lifestyle.
This gets worse when the storm hits and Cort is forced to keep himself and the girls alive out in the swamp without any assistance. He confronts the evil underbelly of the swamp, taking on responsibilities far bigger than any child should have to carry. He is angry with his father, resenting him for putting him in this position, but Cort still manages to rise to the challenges and grows in the process. He confronts the loss of security and safety, and even the loss of his home, and slowly comes to realize that he is not a quitter. Drawing on both the skills and the stubbornness he learnt from his father, he pushes on, eventually succeeding in saving the girls.
In the process, he grows up, seeing his parents as individuals who are trying their best and just want to be happy themselves. He patches things up with his father and forgives his mother. Best of all, he grows even closer to Liza and manages to ask her to the fall party. All of this helps heal his relationship with the swamp and his sense of belonging. He now understands that he can find a compromise, one in which he is not as extreme as his father but still revels in life on the swamp, proud of his heritage.
Cort’s Father
Cort’s father is a river guide who grew up on the swamps of Carolina and has a vast knowledge and set of skills for surviving in the wild. However, his insistence on this extreme lifestyle is a key part of what drove away Cort’s mother, who wanted him to get a typical job and move into town. Since she left, he has stopped taking proper care of himself and Cort and spends too much time to trying to win her back, neglecting his son and their home as a result. When the storm strikes, Cort’s father checks on Cort’s mother instead of staying with his son. Cort’s father’s failure to step up to his parental responsibilities forces Cort on a terrifying adventure that sets in motion the key events of the novel and Cort’s coming-of-age journey.
However, by the end of the book, it is not only Cort who has changed. His father has also effectively “grown up.” He accepts that he will not win back his wife and that he has been neglecting his responsibilities as a parent. He promises not to let Cort down again and makes an effort to relax his stubborn attitude towards his lifestyle. This allows Cort to put down his responsibilities once more and return to life as a teenager, somewhere between the carefree childhood he enjoyed and the premature adult responsibility he took on in the swamp.
Liza
Liza and Cort became friends because they were the only two people their age out on the riverfront. When they were younger, Liza was tough and boisterous and enjoyed playing on the river and in the surrounding woods with Cort. However, when her father died, her relationship with life on the river changed, and she began to focus on typical teenage activities. This causes Cort to worry that she is going to move away from the river and out of his life. This is made worse by the fact that he has just started to realize that he is attracted to her but is concerned that, like his mother, Liza will not want to be with someone who lives in a houseboat and works on the river.
However, as they survive the swamp together, he realizes that she is still practical and tough, noting that “If it were any other girl but Liza with me, we’d be dead” (120) and even deciding that “She’s the bravest person I know” (140). As he becomes more attracted to her, she too becomes drawn to him and, having been saved by him, admits that she likes him because he makes her “feel safe” (203). Liza’s love and acceptance of Cort plays a key part in allowing him to feel that he still belongs on the river and can take pride in his lifestyle.
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By Watt Key
