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Dramatic Irony
Book II, Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—The Lovely Road (Again):
Book 2, Chapter 18 of the novel begins, briefly, with a flashback to the moments before news of Arthur Jarvis’s death. As though having mounted the Umzimkulu Valley, Paton sets the story back at High Place to narrate the events from James Jarvis’s perspective:
Jarvis watched the ploughing with a gloomy eye. The hot afternoon sun of October poured down on the fields, and there was no cloud in the sky. Rain, rain, there was no rain. The clods turned up hard and unbroken, and here and there the plough would ride uselessly over the iron soil. At the end of the field it stopped, and the oxen stood sweating and blowing in the heat.
For a moment, the novel rewinds time. The murder had taken place as early as in Chapter 11, when Stephen Kumalo catches sight of the headlines. But it plays out again as the elder Jarvis watches the Ixopo police car park at the base of the slope and deliver the bad news. The reader relives the aftermath of tragedy (silence, phone calls, tears), this time in the shoes of the victim.
Within the novel’s larger framework, this scene’s flashback plays significant structural roles. This movement back in time creates a clever handoff from one father to the other. The previous chapter closes with Kumalo’s search for a lawyer to represent his son; this one begins with James Jarvis meeting the police captain. It also creates a sense of repetition. “There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills,” the narrator announces, repeating verbatim the lines that had opened Chapter 1. In fact, the first two paragraphs—featuring details of titihoyas, cattle, and matted grass—perfectly repeat the novel’s introduction. Retracing events allows Paton to introduce another perspective and reinforces the incantatory, oral quality of his work.
Related Themes:
