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Chapter 26
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
Fiela tries to get Selling to walk, since his doctors have recommended regular exercise. Selling hasn’t wanted to do much of anything since Dawid’s death. Fiela wonders if God meant to punish someone else and hit her family by mistake. Even Tollie, her son who’s still with her, seems half gone due to all his drinking. Fiela fears what will happen to Wolwekraal when she’s gone. She’s one of the last remaining “Coloured” landowners in the area, and people want to push her out to make more space for ostriches.
Despite how successful Fiela’s property has been recently, the tragedy of Dawid’s death and Tollie’s ongoing struggle with addiction return her life to a state of uncertainty. Fiela tries to raise her children well, yet tragedy and misfortune befall them all the same. This passage underscores Fiela’s limited ability to control her life and the lives of her children. Finally, owning land has long been a sign of status and influence, and so the fact that Fiela is one of the only Coloured landowners in the area provides further evidence of the racial power imbalance in her society.
Themes
Fiela is determined not to sell her property. After Dawid’s death, she has to hire two new men to help. She looks at her ostrich fields, where she continues to pair up male and female birds, since ostriches in the wild tend to mate for life, although most other properties in Kloof have two hens for each male ostrich.
Fiela’s determination to let the ostriches do what they do in nature reflects her larger philosophy of living in harmony with the land. The other farmers around her try to push the ostriches to their maximum productivity, suggesting a more hostile, controlling relationship with nature.
Themes
As Fiela helps Selling walk, Selling asks about a man he sees in the distance. All of a sudden, she sees a white man who reminds her of Benjamin. When he calls her “Ma,” she can’t believe it and starts to cry. They kiss and embrace.
After many years apart, this scene is the dramatic reunion of Benjamin and Fiela. Fiela’s momentary confusion about Benjamin’s identity reflects not only how much time has passed but also how Benjamin has changed as a person, first by learning the ways of the Forest, then by learning to be a sailor.
Themes
Fiela can’t afford to kill a fatted calf or to celebrate Benjamin’s return, but everyone is happy to see him. Benjamin is exhausted and goes to sleep on Dawid’s bed. That night Fiela goes out to thank God.
Fiela often interprets her life by comparing it to Bible passages; here she recalls the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the New Testament. In this story, a son returns home after spending many years away. Though the son worries that his parents will reject him for abandoning them, his father reveals that he anxiously awaited the son’s return ever since he left, and then he slaughters a fatted calf in order to celebrate the occasion. Though Fiela cannot afford a fatted calf, she welcomes Benjamin home with open arms.
Themes
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As news of Benjamin’s return spreads in the Kloof, Petrus and many others come by to visit. Fiela tells Selling that Benjamin has left the Forest for good, but Selling warns that there’s still a sadness in Benjamin. Benjamin returns to the places he remembers from childhood, including where he played with his boats.
The sadness that Selling sees in Benjamin represents the final obstacles Benjamin needs to overcome to complete his coming-of-age character arc. At this point, it’s not clear what those obstacles are, although Benjamin’s return to the place where he played with wooden boats hints that it might be related to his desire to become a sailor.
Themes
Eventually Benjamin builds a real boat from wood. Fiela is worried about him using it, but Selling encourages him, giving him rowing tips based on Selling’s own experience when he was a child participating in rowing competitions on a nearby river. While Fiela is happy to have Benjamin back, they avoid discussing certain topics like the van Rooyens and Kaliel September.
Benjamin shows that even after leaving the sea behind, he still wants to become an oarsman. Selling, who sensed the sadness in Benjamin earlier, seems to sense now that rowing could be a way out of this sadness, which is why he encourages Benjamin.
Themes
Eventually, Benjamin admits to Fiela that he’s troubled that he still can’t shake the feeling that, even after coming back to Wolwekraal, he doesn’t feel free of Elias and Barta. Fiela replies that she’s always known exactly who Benjamin was—a lost lamb whom God led to her hand. Fiela asks Benjamin who he is to himself. Benjamin says that he knew when he returned to Wolwekraal he was finally back home. Fiela feels relieved that after everything, Benjamin is still her son.
Benjamin’s need to prove himself as an oarsman seems connected to his inability to completely shed his “Lukas” identity. Fiela helps Benjamin figure out the question he needs to ask: who is he to himself? Benjamin has spent many years trying to become what other people want him to be, but Fiela, who values independence, shows him that he needs to look inward to know how he really is.
Themes
Fiela wants to put her land in Benjamin’s name so he can inherit it, but Benjamin insists it belongs to Tollie, Emma, and Kittie. Fiela disagrees, believing that women shouldn’t inherit property and that Tollie should only get his portion if he stops drinking.
Fiela’s unwillingness to leave her land to any of the other children shows how protective she is of her property, while perhaps also showing that her ideas about gender roles (specifically her belief that women shouldn’t inherit property) are more old-fashioned than Benjamin’s.
Themes
Benjamin then confesses to Fiela that he’s somehow in love with his “sister” Nina, though she doesn’t know about his feelings for her. Fiela realizes this must be the sadness that Selling recognized in Benjamin earlier. Although a part of Fiela wants to tell Benjamin to forget about Nina, at last she tells him that if Nina were truly his blood relative, he wouldn’t feel the way he does. She advises Benjamin that only one person can stop making him feel like Lukas van Rooyen: Barta.
Fiela puts aside her own feelings of wanting Benjamin to stay in order to help him do what’s best for himself. Although Elias was the more controlling of Benjamin’s parental figures when he lived in the Forest, Fiela instead suggests that Benjamin go speak to Barta, perhaps suggesting that the relationship between a mother and a child plays such an important role in defining the identity of both.
Themes
