Terror at Bottle Creek

Cort has a conflicted sense of belonging in his home on the river. Growing up, he loved spending time out on the swamp and water with his father, learning his father’s skills, and immersing himself in the lifestyle of a river guide. In fact, his relationship to the swamp is very much tied to his father, and when he thinks of his father, he knows that the “swamp ran in his blood all the way back to our Creek Indian ancestors” (25). Cort used to take pride in this and enjoy sharing his knowledge of the swamp with Liza. It was all part of feeling secure in a home where he truly belonged.

However, when his mother left, this began to change. He now finds the experience of being out on the river with his distracted father to be isolating and lonely and even finds that his swamp knowledge is useless. A key part of this is recognizing that his mother left because of his father’s insistence on living this lifestyle, and Cort is increasingly afraid of the same thing happening to him. He worries that Liza will not want to be with him if he continues to live on a houseboat and spend his days out on the water.

This sense of no longer belonging or wanting to belong on the swamp is made worse by his experiences in the storm. Suddenly flooded with water and lashed by wind and rain, the familiar place where he grew up becomes unfamiliar and dangerous. As he confronts danger after danger, this new view of the swamp strengthens his belief that no one would want to be with a riverman like himself, and he abandons his sense of connection and belonging to the river.

However, he manages to resolve this conflict: His experiences have given him a new sense of maturity and independence, and his loved ones reassure him that he does not have to choose between living on the river and enjoying a “normal” life. Cort’s father making efforts to be less extreme and stubborn, and Liza saying that she does not want to move away from the river as long as Cort is there, help him to develop a new sense of belonging that is not as extreme as his father’s but still allows him to take pride that “the delta [is] in my blood” (208).

Responsibility is key to the characters’ development. Cort’s father has a responsibility to his son, to look after him, to make his care a key focus of his life. However, he has started to neglect that responsibility because he is so distracted by trying to win back Cort’s mother. This reaches its most extreme form when he fails to be there for Cort and the Stovall girls when the storm hits because he is too busy trying to support Cort’s mother. He has neglected his responsibilities so much that Cort must remind him that his mother is an adult, but he and the girls are children. With his father no longer meeting his responsibilities, Cort must take up the slack, having adult responsibilities forced upon him despite being only 13 years old.

These are extreme responsibilities, far beyond what a child should have to carry, and Cort resents his father for putting him in this position at such a young age. However, he does rise to the challenge, selflessly taking responsibility for the girls’ wellbeing and even taking pride in fulfilling such a duty. Through this, he experiences growth and development, becoming more adult in ways that help to shift his perspectives and relationships. However, this is still too extreme a shift, so he is relieved when his father returns and he can let go of his adult responsibilities again. He can return to a life in which he is more responsible than a child but does not have to carry the weight adults carry. The responsibility that is thrust upon Cort helps him to develop into a teenager and begin his journey to becoming an adult.