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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fiela’s Child, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Parenting
Justice
Humanity vs. Nature
Summary
Analysis
Benjamin has been away from Wolwekraal for five days and has stopped crying and complaining because he fears what Elias might do if he loses his patience. The whole family continues to call Benjamin “Lukas,” and they have taken his items from his box and are now using them themselves.
Benjamin’s silence is less a sign that he’s accepted his new identity than a symptom of his fear. He hasn’t forgotten about Fiela and doesn’t see himself as Lukas—he’s simply afraid of what Elias will do to him if he fails to cooperate.
Themes
Nina come to Benjamin and says she wants to show him a secret. He agrees to go with her, and along the way he asks her how to get to Long Kloof. Nina says there’s a road and that her secret is on the way there. She leads Benjamin along a path in the Forest, warning him to say to the side because the muddy footpath is slippery. She says they’re heading down to a creek.
Nina’s creek serves a similar function for her as Benjamin’s river with the wooden boats did for him back in Wolwekraal. This similarity suggests the characteristics that Nina and Benjamin have in common. It also highlights how the natural environment has shaped their identities.
Themes
Benjamin gets mad at Nina for wearing his nightshirt like a dress and ruining it in the mud, saying his mother (Fiela) will have to clean it. Nina keeps insisting like everyone else that Benjamin is in fact the lost Lukas. Then Nina runs ahead of him; Benjamin chases after her, calling her name. She doesn’t respond. He fears that a tiger got her. At last, he slips in the mud, and Nina reappears to burst out laughing at him.
Nina is too young to understand Benjamin’s origins, so she blindly repeats what her parents—authority figures—have told her. Benjamin too remains under the influence of his parents, imagining how Fiela might scold him for dirtying his shirt, even though he doesn’t know when he’ll even see Fiela again.
Themes
Nina leads Benjamin down to the creek where she has started a collection of glass bottles. She likes blowing on them to make sounds. Benjamin begs her to finally show him the path out of the Forest. When she refuses, Benjamin says he has money, which Elias didn’t find because it wasn’t in his box. Benjamin tells Nina she could use to buy real musical instruments if she wants. Nina says she’d also like a new blanket since the “bigfeet” trampled hers—she says people avoid saying “elephant” so that the elephants don’t think people are calling them. Nina and Benjamin make a deal that if he gives her the five shillings he has, she’ll show him the path out of the Forest tomorrow.
The unwillingness of the Forest people to call elephants by their real name perhaps reflects a broader fear of facing the truth head on. In the case of Elias and Barta, this truth could be the fact that that Benjamin is not their son Lukas, and that Lukas is dead, no matter what the magistrate claims. Nina’s interest in music shows and early desire to escape the influence of her family, particularly her father, who thinks in cold, calculating terms and seemingly doesn’t have time for pleasures like music.
Themes
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Meanwhile, Elias thinks about how Benjamin has caused trouble by being stubborn. He wants to teach Benjamin how to do real work with an ax, but Barta warns him not to beat the child. Elias worries that Benjamin has spent too much time among the “Coloureds” to ever be normal. He is annoyed that Benjamin and Nina are off not doing work.
Benjamin annoys Elias because he represents something Elias can’t control. Elias wants to teach Benjamin how to use an ax because that’s what his son Lukas would have been doing if he were alive—Elias wants to force Benjamin to become Lukas, regardless of whether he actually is Lukas.
Themes
That night, when Benjamin returns from the Forest with Nina, Elias thinks he’s behaving better, even if he’s still being too quiet. That Tuesday, Elias gets Benjamin started working on wooden beams. Benjamin goes looking for his shoes, but Elias tells him he doesn’t need shoes for this work. He goes to the shed and begins to teach Benjamin the process of making wooden beams. Nina comes in, wanting to get Benjamin away to play, but Elias forces her to help with the work.
Elias doesn’t want Benjamin to wear shoes because he’s afraid that shoes will help him run away. Earlier, the magistrate used a similar tactic by separating Benjamin from the box of things that Fiela gave him. Elias’s disdain for play makes him different from Fiela, who assigned chores but let her children play when they had the time.
Themes
Aunt Malie comes over to check on Elias. He tells her about how he’s put both Nina and Benjamin to work, but she says it might take more than just that to keep them out of trouble. Malie cautions Elias that after nine years away, it might take Benjamin a long time to readjust to Forest life. Elias thinks Malie is just trying to make him angry. Malie comments that aside from having Barta’s eyes and possibly Elias’s nose, he otherwise bears no resemblance to their other children. Elias is preoccupied thinking of how “Lukas” can increase his output of wooden beams.
While it seems clear from the start that Benjamin most likely isn’t Lukas, Aunt Malie’s comments here really drive the point home. Elias’s refusal to listen to her concerns suggests that, regardless of whether he believes Benjamin really is Lukas, he doesn’t particularly care, so long as he has someone around to make him money.
Themes
Aunt Malie has more to say to Elias. She talks about how she, Elias, and the other Forest people don’t have much contact with the outside world—she herself has only left the Forest twice in her lifetime. She talks about how one time when she was younger, a fancy man came to the forest and pitched a tent right near her family’s house. He wrote and drew a lot about what he saw around him. At first, the stranger thought all the people of the Forest were wonderful, but he quickly changed his mind when he saw Malie’s father come back with several dead louries (a type of bird with beautiful feathers) to eat. The stranger left the next day.
Aunt Malie’s story illustrates how practices that might seem normal to one person can seem totally strange and even barbaric to an outsider. Although she doesn’t say so specifically, the visitor to her family’s home when she was a girl seems to have been some sort of anthropologist. The anthropologist found many aspects of Forest life quaint, but he recoiled at the horror of the dead birds, perhaps failing to see how violence was necessary to enable the other parts of life in the forest. Aunt Malie may be hinting that as an outsider, Benjamin himself sees the dark side of Forest life.
Themes
Elias has heard this story from Aunt Malie before and isn’t impressed by it. Elias goes to check on Benjamin and Nina’s progress with the beams, only to find they’re both gone and have barely done anything at all. Elias blames Malie for distracting him. Later in the day, Nina comes back from the forest alone and tries to sneak in, but Barta stops her. Elias asks where “Lukas” went, and Nina says he ran away. She says “Lukas” is heading back to his old home and that he remembers the way from when Elias brought him. Elias accuses Nina of lying, then he rushes off after the boy.
One of Elias’s defining features is that he is so obsessed with his own schemes and so convinced of his own correctness that he refuses to learn from others. For this reason, he doesn’t learn anything from Aunt Malie’s story and just sees her as a distraction. Aunt Malie wanted to help Elias understand Benjamin, but Elias only wants to control him, and so when he hears that Benjamin has run away, his first thought is that he needs to catch him.
Themes
