Previous
Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dream House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Understanding, and Historical Change
Truth, Accountability, and Memory
Parental Love vs. Romantic Love
Rebirth and New Beginnings
Humor, Ignorance, and Denial
Summary
Analysis
Beauty. Beauty finds Bheki sitting in the kitchen, sits down opposite, and asks about Richard. In isiZulu, Bheki says some workers spotted him and Bheki thought he’d come back to the house. Wondering whether Looksmart has killed Richard, Beauty suddenly hopes he has. She grabs Bheki’s hand. When he asks what’s wrong, she’s scared to speak in case “too much truth spill[s] out.” She asks whether he’s talked to Looksmart. When he says yes, she asks what they talked about. Bheki, taking his hand from hers, won’t say.
In previous scenes, Beauty has steered Richard away from the house to avoid a violent confrontation between Richard and Looksmart—yet now, she hopes Looksmart has killed Richard, suggesting her real anger about Richard’s murder of her sister. Beauty’s fear that “too much truth” may emerge if she speaks, meanwhile, implies she’s still keeping some secrets from the others.
Themes
Beauty senses Bheki’s loyalty has transferred from her to Looksmart. She gets up, opens the door, and sees what she thinks is a dirty child—before she realizes it’s Richard. As Beauty stares, Bheki asks whether she’s going to let Richard in. Instead, Beauty exits the house. Bheki asks what she’s doing, but she just leads Richard away toward the dairy. Richard asks, “Mama?” She doesn’t reply.
That Richard calls Beauty “Mama” suggests that his dementia has made him infantile and pitiable, even if it hasn’t undone his evil adult actions. Though Beauty was just wishing Looksmart had killed Richard, she again leads Richard from the house to protect him. This decision may suggest that she sees his vulnerability too clearly to allow him to be hurt—or that she needs her job too badly, no matter how horribly the Wileys have treated her family.
Themes
Beauty takes Richard to her half-built house, dries him, and changes him into some of her clothes. He asks: “Is this our house?” She tells him it is. When he says he would like them to go home, she tells him they already are. Though she senses he knows she’s lying, he doesn’t care, since he feels “content.”
Beauty removes Richard from his own house, which represents the effects of the past on the present, to protect him from the consequences of his actions. Richard can no longer fully differentiate past and present—but he may still sense Beauty is lying to him, though he’s willing to accept both her deceit and her care.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia remembers when she met Richard, after her father hired him to manage the farm. When he ate with Patricia’s family in Durban, he ogled her and the rich décor. Knowing he had traveled from England to South Africa, she appreciated his “boldness” without realizing “he had used it all up.”
That Richard was Patricia’s father’s employee—and that he made eyes both at her and at her father’s fancy furniture—indicates that Richard came from a less privileged economic background than Patricia, which made him both desire her and, perhaps, resent her. Patricia’s projection of “boldness” onto Richard, though he “had used it all up,” shows again how Patricia misunderstands other people’s inner lives and true natures.
Themes
Get the entire The Dream House LitChart as a printable PDF.
When Patricia tells Looksmart she thinks she should apologize to him, he replies, “You ‘think’?”—but he admits the situation seems “too easy.” Patricia denies that but says she can’t alter Richard’s actions or what she may or may not have been thinking while Grace died. Looksmart asks whether she’s sorry, and Patricia realizes he’s scared “she’ll retract her small apology—not even give him that.” When she insists she is sorry, he tells her he wants her to keep saying that to him forever. Thinking he might be joking, Patricia asks jokingly back whether he actually wants to keep seeing her. He replies, seriously, that he doesn’t know what’s possible now.
Looksmart’s sarcastic response to Patricia’s quasi-apology reveals they are still not at ease with each other, as does his serious response to Patricia’s joke toward the end of the passage. His admission that Beauty’s story seems “too easy” reveals his lingering doubts about what happened, and his anxiety that Patricia might “retract her small apology” shows both his unease about what really happened and his lingering attachment to Patricia. Even as Patricia apologizes, she insists they can’t change the past, indicating her pessimistic understanding of history’s irreversibility.
Themes
Patricia asks whether life will continue in the same way after she travels to Durban with Richard, Beauty, and Bheki. When Looksmart asks whether she wants it to, she asks what he wants—whether he can be “something new.” When he asks what she means, she says she means “hope.” He laughs cynically, as if “hope is a flag waved in a country that has yet to exist,” and says he’s already tried hope: that’s why he has success and a family. Patricia tells him it’s a “good start” and that he’s lucky—she’s childless.
Though Patricia has just insisted that they can’t change the past, she seems hopeful that Looksmart might move past the trauma of Grace’s death and be reborn as “something new.” His laughter at Patricia’s invocation of “hope,” as if “hope is a flag waved in a country that has yet to exist,” implies that in the South Africa that does exist, he cannot escape the trauma of anti-Black racist violence like Richard’s murder of Grace. That Patricia doesn’t understand this, Looksmart’s cynical laughter suggests, means she still doesn’t understand the context that has shaped their whole relationship. Patricia’s belief that his family is a “good start” toward rebirth highlights how Patricia herself views children as second chances for the parent—which perhaps explains her intense grief at losing first her dead baby and then Looksmart.
Themes
Looksmart says, “There’s more to a man than a suit.” When Patricia asks whether he doesn’t care about his success, he demands to know whether she wants gratitude. She insists he’s had excellent chances; he replies he’s “worked hard for every single thing.” When she exclaims that she doesn’t know what he wants, he tells her he wants her to “remember that dog” the way he does and not be able to retire to Durban “without a backward glance.”
When Looksmart says, “There’s more to a man than a suit,” he means that his economic success can’t make up for his past trauma. His claim that he “worked hard for every single thing” suggests his assumption that Patricia might take credit for his success merely because she funded his education. His exclamation that he wants her to remember the dog and not retire “without a backward glance” suggests that white South African people who have committed great wrongs against Black South African people ought not to seek out fresh starts and rebirths—they ought to remember what they have done and live with the truth.
Themes
Quietly, Patricia tells Looksmart she may understand: “I also know what it is. To die quietly.” She tells him she wouldn’t have married Richard if he hadn’t gotten her pregnant. Her pregnancy was the only reason her father agreed to the marriage. She lied to him that she was happy till he died, but she admits she wasn’t “happy again” until Looksmart started spending time at her house. Looksmart, pointing out she just told him she was childless, asks whether her child is still alive. Patricia deflects the question.
Patricia values parent-child love far more than romance: she married Richard only because he was the father of her child, pretended to be happy with Richard to keep her father from worrying about her, and became “happy again” only when she had the opportunity to act maternally toward Looksmart. Yet she is comparing her maternal grief to Looksmart’s romantic grief here: they both metaphorically “die[d] quietly” after their losses—Patricia’s loss of Rachel and Looksmart, Looksmart’s of Grace—and need some kind of rebirth.
Themes
Looksmart. Looksmart throws a box across the room and tells Patricia he wants to know about her child, since when he was a child, he thought her paying for his education meant she valued him: “you woke something up and then you killed it—you killed it as surely as you made me to kill that fish.” When Patricia insists they released the fish, Looksmart insists they didn’t. Patricia tells Looksmart she provided him with everything he desired. She reminds him how she paid for his school and wrote him letters every week. He reminds her that when he came back from school on holidays, he stayed in a “mud hut.”
Though Looksmart has told Patricia the truth about Grace’s death, they haven’t resolved their disputes about the past. Here, they continue to fight about whether they killed the fish. Looksmart compares the fish to the “something” Patricia “woke” in him, a comparison that suggests Patricia’s maternal affection gave Looksmart a greater capacity for love or joy—which Patricia then destroyed through her racist reaction to Grace’s death. When Patricia reminds Looksmart how she helped and cared for him as a child, he reminds her that he still lived in a “mud hut,” representing the racial and socioeconomic divisions between them.
Themes
Feeling “sheer relief” at yelling, Patricia and Looksmart continue their fight. She tells him she gave him work and taught him about the household; he contends that caring for her lawn and car doesn’t count as real work and that perhaps she should never have taken him out of the hut. At this, they feel they’re “freeing themselves from the small patch that has stood between them.” Patricia tells Looksmart that lots of children do household chores and that he used to like taking care of her car.
Patricia and Looksmart used to connect through humor; now they connect through honest anger. Finally expressing their feelings gives them “sheer relief” and removes the distance “that has stood between them.” Looksmart admits he found caring for Patricia’s car (a symbol of her racial and socioeconomic status) demeaning; Patricia shoots back that children do chores, implying she was treating him as a son, not a servant, when she gave him work.
Themes
Looksmart demands to know what happened to Patricia’s son. Patricia, horrified but seeming about to laugh, says: “Who said anything about a son?” When Looksmart acts baffled, she tells him she had a daughter who died. He demands to know more. After telling him there were “complications,” Patricia finally reveals the daughter, Rachel, was stillborn.
Looksmart’s assumption that Patricia had a son implies he’s jealous: he’s thinking of her child as someone similar enough to him to be a rival for her affection. Despite her horror, Patricia responds with near-laughter and a sarcastic rhetorical question; at this critical moment, she is once again using humor to suppress and control her emotions.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia’s daughter Rachel was born dead at seven months. Patricia held the “forever dead” body in the hospital. Then nurses put the body in a box. Patricia can’t remember whether Richard was with her. When she found out, after the stillbirth, that she was infertile, she felt like the rest of her life amounted to a straight trip toward death.
The description of Rachel’s body as “forever dead” implies the impossibility of rebirth in the face of literal death. That Patricia can’t remember whether Richard was present shows not only her unreliable memory but also how unable Richard would have been to comfort her: her marriage means nothing to her in comparison to her lost opportunity for motherhood.
Themes
Looksmart asks how Richard dealt with the stillbirth. Patricia—recalling how Richard “crept away, a lame dog,” from her gaze—says he didn’t deal with it well. When Looksmart asks how she dealt with it, she thinks about how she sold horses “for other people’s children”—but she only says that she focused on her garden. Intuiting the revelations about Rachel and Grace have put her and Looksmart on more even footing, Patricia tells him he was “the only child ever to be happy in this house [. . .]. You were like the sun [. . .]. My son.”
By comparing Richard to “a lame dog,” the novel hints that while Richard used a dog to dehumanize and murder Grace, he is the one with really inhumane tendencies: he didn’t even try to comfort his wife after their daughter’s stillbirth. Patricia’s recognition that she dealt with Rachel’s death by raising horses “for other people’s children” reveals she redirected her maternal feelings to other children as well as Looksmart. When Patricia associates Looksmart’s childhood happiness with the house, which represents the effects of the past on the present, she is implicitly arguing that their shared history contains things other than violence and horror, like joy and love.
Themes
Patricia remembers how she often got carrot cake for Looksmart when he returned home from boarding school because he loved carrot cake. They’d eat on the veranda while he told her about school. After that, she would tell him about the farm while omitting the Wileys’ economic problems—not realizing that he might have started omitting things too.
Patricia may have kept young Looksmart ignorant of her gradual loss of economic stability to keep him from worrying, but by denying him the truth, she created distance in their relationship. That she didn’t realize he might be hiding important truths from her too demonstrates once again her difficulty imagining the inner lives of other people.
Themes
Patricia says Looksmart started to look down on her—as when he would look scornfully at her photos. Looksmart says he particularly remembers a photo of Richard having shot two leopards. When Looksmart asks where the leopard skins are, Patricia says they’re probably boxed up. She says she thought his looking down on her was just a transitory stage, but she was wrong. Looksmart agrees.
The photo of Richard with leopards he’d killed appeared earlier, foreshadowing his capacity for violence. Since his (racist) violence killed Grace, the novel seems to be implying here that in looking down on the Wileys’ photos, Looksmart was beginning to notice the Wileys’ racism and cruelty.
Themes
Patricia recalls asking John about her estrangement from Looksmart. John reassured her that though Looksmart wasn’t her son, he’d return, because the time he’d spent with her was “too significant”; their temporary estrangement was due to the nature of boys.
John was partly right and partly wrong: Looksmart did return—yet the time he spent with Patricia was “significant” not only due to her maternal affection for him but also because her racist reaction to Grace traumatized him. Looksmart has returned because Patricia is important to him but also because he wants to hold her accountable, and it isn’t clear whether their estrangement will turn out to be temporary or permanent.
Themes
Patricia tells Looksmart she can’t remember whether she ever linked his departure to Grace’s death, but she began thinking of him “as another dead child.” He shakes his head, and Patricia interprets him as rejecting the connection she’s drawn between him and Rachel. She tells him: “I didn’t want to think of you as taking from me and giving nothing back [. . .] You see, it went against my idea of you.”
By comparing Looksmart’s departure to Rachel’s death, Patricia makes clear his absence devastated her. When she admits she thought of him as “another dead child” because it “went against [her] idea of” him to think of him as alive but refusing to return her affection, however, she reveals how she can be willfully blind to the truth about other people if acknowledging that truth would hurt her.
Themes
Looksmart. Looksmart loved his first school, though it was tiny and poorly insulated. He skipped so many grades that a teacher informed his mother he should apply to a better school. Looksmart’s mother asked Patricia for help, which Patricia immediately gave. When Patricia brought Looksmart to John, Looksmart noticed the attraction between the adults. Though Looksmart knew about the affair, John didn’t treat Looksmart better—instead, John “‘put him in his place.’” For example, John hit Looksmart on Looksmart’s birthday for rocking in his chair while waiting for cake. This caused Looksmart to feel “what he would later come to know as his hate.”
While Looksmart’s mother was uncomfortable with Patricia’s intense interest in Looksmart, she appealed to Patricia when Looksmart needed help, which suggests that she put Looksmart’s wellbeing above her own feelings. That John decided to “‘put [Looksmart] in his place’” shows both racism and, perhaps, guilt about his affair with Patricia, which Looksmart knew about. John’s racist violence encouraged Looksmart’s “hate,” an emotional reaction to unjust racial hierarchies.
Themes
When Looksmart became a prefect in his final school year, he went to John’s house every month for prefects’ meetings. One time, they went outside together companionably to urinate, and Looksmart “could almost imagine liking” John if it weren’t for John’s violence and the hypocrisy of his religious services. Later in life, Looksmart ran into fellow graduates from the school; one became a coworker and treated him like a friend, though they never had been. Looksmart appreciated this treatment, which “gave him a dignity that stretched back.”
Looksmart could “imagine liking” John except for John’s violence, because that violence betrays both John’s individual racism and the larger racist social context in which they live. Yet this same social context—in which Looksmart is one of only a few Black South African people with a fancy education—gives Looksmart “a dignity that stretche[s] back,” a status he has used to further his career and that other Black characters in the novel, like Beauty and Bheki, have not had the opportunity to access.
Themes
Patricia tells Looksmart that if she’d known he wanted to marry Grace, she would have advised him against it: one shouldn’t “marry below” oneself, like she did with Richard. Looksmart requests that they not talk about Richard. When Patricia agrees, Looksmart reflects that she always avoids the subject of her husband. She asks Looksmart what his wife is like. Looksmart claims she’s “good,” like Patricia’s father, but hides his face to keep the “truth” hidden.
When Patricia says one shouldn’t “marry below” oneself, she seems to advise against marrying someone less educated and perhaps less socioeconomically privileged. This advice betrays Patricia’s snobbery. Looksmart’s desire to hide the “truth” about his marriage from Patricia hints that after their earlier outbursts of honesty, they have retreated to deceit and denial.
Themes
Looksmart has never loved his wife, though he felt thankful to her after his daughters’ births. At most, he sometimes loves “the idea of her—or the idea of himself with her.” He’s having an affair with a rich white woman whose daughter goes to school with his. Without liking or understanding this woman, he felt “curious” and “flattered” by her overtures. He tends to distrust others’ love for him—except his daughters’ love, which he reciprocates absolutely. He couldn’t live without them.
Looksmart adores his daughters but doesn’t love his wife, highlighting the importance of parent-child love in the novel and the comparative unimportance of romance. That he loves the “idea” of his wife “or the idea of himself with her” suggests that he, like Patricia, can be willfully blind to reality, overwriting it with his own ideas. His affair with a white woman he doesn’t like, meanwhile, hints at internalized racism. In South Africa, sex between white and non-white people was illegal until 1985, and Black people were treated as legally inferior to white people. Only if you assume white people are inherently superior should a Black man be “flattered” by interest from a white woman he doesn’t like—and yet Looksmart feels flattered, showing that South Africa’s white-supremacist past haunts his thinking.
Themes
Looksmart thinks he can’t tell Patricia about this aspect of his life because she would lecture him. She demands more self-awareness from others than she practices. He wonders whether she doesn’t “value[] her own life enough” to examine it. Yet there is something he wants to tell her. Taking papers from his jacket, he tells her he works for the company that bought her farm. He tells her that, far from “reclaiming the land” for Black South African people, he’s helping build a “gated community” for white people who want to avoid Black people.
Though Looksmart’s belief that Patricia lacks self-awareness seems critical of her, his speculation that she doesn’t “value[] her own life enough” demonstrates his curiosity about and sympathy for her—his feelings for her remain complex. It’s somewhat unclear why he wants to tell her about his involvement in purchasing the Wileys’ farm. While he might want to lord it over a racist white woman that a Black man now controls her former property, he’s quite clear that the development project is itself racist: his company is helping white people avoid living near Black people. He is not bringing a fresh start to the farm, which has been a place of white supremacy and anti-Black violence.
Themes
Looksmart shows Patricia the papers, plans for the community. Patricia says she hopes the builders raze her house—a comment Looksmart thinks “aspire[s] to speak for him” but doesn’t express his feelings. He gives her the speech he gives to collaborators, realizing he’s always wanted to give it to her: the huts and farm structures will be removed to make room for versions of the Wiley house “reproduce[d …] with slight variations, all across the valley.” The Wiley house will be preserved but renovated “almost beyond recognition.” Patricia tells him they “ought to have done all that years ago.” He agrees.
As the Wileys’ house represents the influence of the past on the present, Patricia’s and Looksmart’s attitudes toward the house reveal their attitudes toward the past. Patricia wants it forgotten and destroyed due to her own guilt and Looksmart’s suffering. When Looksmart thinks Patricia is “aspir[ing] to speak for him,” he’s acknowledging that she wants the house destroyed partly out of concern for him. Yet his feelings aren’t what she expects: rather than forgetting or destroying the past, he wants to renovate it “almost beyond recognition,” changing it to suit his best interests. Looksmart’s desire to renovate the Wileys’ house, which represents the past, hints that he may not care about the truth as much about forwarding the version of the past he wants to believe in.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia wonders whether Looksmart’s “dream house,” the Wileys’ house renovated and reproduced in other houses, is just a reproduction of Looksmart’s suffering. Yet she likes his “attachment” to her house and hopes something positive may have come out of her and her father’s residency there.
By using the phrase “dream house,” Patricia implies there is something unreal or self-deceiving about Looksmart’s renovation project—and, by implication, his desire to take control of his past. Her pleasure at his “attachment,” on the other hand, indicates that she sees his desire to preserve the house as indicating some emotional investment in her.
Themes
Patricia asks how Looksmart ended up working on the project. He says that when he heard the Wileys were selling the farm, he got his company involved. She says she’s glad he’s involved and suggests that once she leaves the house, he’ll be free of “everything—that’s dead.” He says he isn’t sure; since coming to the farm, his feelings have changed. Patricia wishes he’d say he loved her—loved her more than his own mother—but “even if this were true,” it wouldn’t be characteristic of Patricia and Looksmart’s relationship for him to make overt declarations like that.
When Patricia suggests that her leaving the house will free Looksmart of “everything—that’s dead,” she implies that Looksmart’s trauma ultimately derives from her—her racism and its destruction of their relationship—not Grace’s death. In this view, the end of their relationship will give Looksmart a fresh start. When Looksmart expresses doubt, Patricia hopes this means he still wants a relationship with her—indeed, she’s so invested in their relationship that she’s obviously jealous of Looksmart’s biological mother. Yet because their relationship developed in a racist environment where they couldn’t express affection openly, Patricia is sure they won’t start expressing affection now “even if” Looksmart loves her.
Themes
Patricia asks after Looksmart’s mother. Looksmart says she lives with his family in Johannesburg, in his house’s “garden cottage.” Patricia, jealous and glad, recalls how Looksmart began resenting his mother slightly prior to resenting Patricia—as if that were “safer” or as if he resented Patricia for making him look down on his mother. Patricia says she’s glad he’s taking care of her. Looksmart is annoyed Patricia would suppose he’d do anything else. He goes on to say his mother grows vegetables in his yard and ought to live in a rural area. When Patricia suggests he buy his mother one of the farms, he laughs—though Patricia wasn’t joking.
Here the novel explicitly acknowledges Patricia’s jealousy of Looksmart’s mother, underscoring her maternal feelings for Looksmart. When Patricia speculates that he displaced his anger at Patricia onto his mother, it reveals that Patricia suspects how her racial and economic privilege harmed him: it was “safer” for Looksmart to hate his own mother than to hate Patricia, and the education Patricia arranged for him may have alienated him from his family. Despite Patricia’s partial understanding, she and Looksmart are not in sync: Looksmart laughs at her serious suggestion.
Themes
Patricia tells Looksmart how proud his mother always was of him. When Looksmart replies, “Don’t I know it!”, Patricia detects “self-loathing” in his voice. She says that after he went to boarding school, she used to read his mother his school reports—and his mother, though mostly illiterate, would keep them. Patricia doesn’t recall any of this; she just wants Looksmart to be aware of his mother, Patricia, and “all the women who have ever loved him in his life.”
Looksmart’s ironic exclamation and apparent “self-loathing” at his mother’s pride suggest both that he thinks her pride is misplaced and that he feels his hard-won status has alienated him from his working-class mother. When Patricia lies to Looksmart to remind him of “all the women who have ever loved him,” the novel reveals a new reason its characters may deceive each other: not only to hide their own bad actions, but also to make each other feel good and express love.
Themes
Looksmart tells Patricia that when he started boarding school, his mother began looking at him the same way she looked at Patricia—with “strange eyes.” By the time he graduated, he was no longer at home either with his mother or with Patricia. Patricia speculates that this is “the price we all had to pay.”
Looksmart’s education did, in fact, alienate him from his mother: he perceived her as looking at him with “strange eyes” as if he, like Patricia, were privileged—even white. Patricia doesn’t explain what she means when she suggests that alienation was “the price we all had to pay.” She may mean that greater racial equality in South Africa not only stripped white people of unearned privileges but also alienated older Black generations who lived their lives under legal oppression from younger Black generations who were freer.
Themes
Historically, Patricia has perceived life in terms of “loss and decay.” Everything she’s loved, she’s lost: her mother, her baby Rachel, her father, Richard, John, and Looksmart himself. Yet as she’s spotted new buildings being constructed and new plants growing, she’s perceived a “different way of viewing the world: as an inexhaustible source of renewal and growth.” That perception makes her momentarily joyful.
Patricia, an atheist, doesn’t believe any of her dead loved ones can be literally resurrected or reborn; she believes every individual life is traveling toward “loss and decay,” that is, death. Yet even if individual lives never get fresh starts, “renewal and growth” in the form of new lives being born do occur. When Patricia thinks at the historical or natural level rather than the individual level, she can happily perceive “inexhaustible” life.
Themes
Patricia asks whether Looksmart would visit her in Durban, without thinking he will or being sure she’d like it. Feeling suddenly dour, she says they could walk the old dog Ethunzini and play fetch. Looksmart, “seeming to understand her exactly,” laughs and says they could make the dog “jump through hoops.”
Dogs have previously symbolized white subordination of and violence against Black people. When Patricia says she and Looksmart could play fetch with Ethunzini, she is suggesting—perhaps without believing it’s possible—that she and Looksmart could behave as human equals while treating a dog like a pet, not a weapon, thus rejecting the racial hierarchy that has shaped their relationship. Though Looksmart “exactly” grasps the symbolic implications, he treats her suggestion as a joke: clearly they won’t be able to teach an old dog the new trick of “jump[ing] through hoops,” any more than they can undo the effects of South Africa’s white-supremacist past on their relationship.
Themes
Patricia wants to say Looksmart’s “the closest she ever got” to a son. She thinks about inviting his family to Durban and imagines them playing croquet. But then she thinks that children play on technology now, so what she could give Looksmart’s daughters would seem like “old junk” to them.
Patricia still wishes to express maternal feelings for Looksmart, hence her desire to tell him he’s “the closest she ever got” to a son. Yet when she thinks she has nothing to offer but “old junk” for Looksmart’s daughters, she’s expressing her sense that she—an old white woman who lived most of her life under apartheid—is a relic with nothing to give new generations.
Themes
Though Patricia wants to tell Looksmart she’s going to be scared, she thinks that was one of his motives for visiting in the first place. She says she’s glad he visited and that she’s come to understand him better. Looksmart, regretfully, denies she knows him at all. He tells her that though she wants to mother him, their bond can’t exist in South Africa’s future.
Looksmart doesn’t explain what he means when he says his and Patricia’s relationship can’t exist in South Africa’s future. Yet the reader can speculate: since the parent-child relationship is an unequal one, with the parent having more power and responsibility, white adults like Patricia shouldn’t try to ‘parent’ Black adults like Looksmart in a more racially equal society.
Themes
Richard. Richard knows he’s not in his house because “the black girl” (Beauty) is sitting on the bed. He feels as though he’s done something terrible but can’t remember what. He asks whether he’s been to this house previously; Beauty in isiZulu reassures him he has. Spotting a spade, he remembers where he wanted to take it and asks, “Where did they bury you?” In isiZulu, Beauty says Patricia doesn’t want him to go there. Richard heads for the spade, only to discover it’s a stick. Nevertheless, he’s sure he can get where he’s going “if he doesn’t pause to think.”
The Wileys’ house represents the inevitable influence of the past on the present; when Richard recognizes he’s not in his house because a “black girl” is on the bed, it suggests that the past carries with it racial hierarchies that Beauty’s casual posture belies. Richard’s dementia in this scene shows both the fragility of memory and the past’s endurance: he knows he's done something evil, though not what, and “if he doesn’t pause to think,” he suspects he can still find Rachel’s grave.
Themes
Beauty. Beauty follows Richard out of her house but can’t see him in the dark. When she goes to the Wileys’ house check on Patricia, she finds the kitchen empty and Bheki gone. Laughter is coming from the sitting room. Though the laughter shocks her, she’s able to infer from it that Richard isn’t there.
Though the characters use humor to hurt one another and deny their own feelings, they also use it to connect. Beauty can tell Richard isn’t home because people are laughing there, which demonstrates his lack of human connections.
Themes
Richard. Touching Rachel’s headstone, Richard feels pressed for time because Beauty is looking for him and will take him away from the grave. He digs with his hands but can’t find Rachel. Then he picks up a twig that looks “slim and firm as a chicken bone.”
Given Richard’s mental state, the reader isn’t sure when he picks up a twig resembling a “chicken bone” whether it might, in fact, be part of Rachel’s skeleton. His utter focus on Rachel despite his confusion shows his intense emotional investment in his stillborn daughter.
Themes
Patricia. The builders have promised not to cut down the bloodwoods by Rachel’s grave, but Patricia is disturbed Looksmart hasn’t mentioned them. She asks about her roses; he promises they’ll preserve them. Pleased, though she thinks he’s lying, she decides to have Rachel brought to Durban for reburial. Jokingly, she reminds Looksmart how to care for roses. Joking back, Looksmart reminds her how he watered them too much as a child—an incident they recall, for once, the same way.
Patricia likes that Looksmart would lie to comfort her, demonstrating again her belief that people can lie out of love, not just to protect themselves. Patricia and Looksmart’s shared joke coincides with their first completely compatible memory—showing that they have retained some of their ability to forge a flawed, somewhat deceitful personal connection through humor.
Themes
Richard. Richard enters the house carrying a stone “the size of a human skull.” He sees a well-dressed Black man (Looksmart) laughing with Patricia, which shocks him. Patricia asks him what he’s carrying. Richard says he thought he saw the house burning and that they’d finally die. He asks Patricia whether they’re dead. She says no. Looksmart “makes a sound like laughter that is not laughter.” When Richard demands to know who Looksmart is, Patricia says he works for the company that bought the farm and was just leaving.
The description of Richard’s stone as “the size of a human skull” reminds the reader that Richard was just trying to dig up Rachel. Richard’s shock at seeing Patricia laughing with a Black man reminds the reader both of his racism and his exclusion from the human connections that humor provides. Notably, when Richard betrays his dementia by asking whether they’re dead, Looksmart reacts with “a sound like laughter that is not laughter”— suggesting that what Richard said might be morbidly funny, but that Looksmart won’t even laugh at Richard, let alone with him. Richard’s fear that the house is burning down may symbolize Richard’s loss of the past to dementia or his fear that historical change has irrevocably destroyed past social structures that benefited him, such as white supremacy.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia calls for Beauty, whom she heard enter the house earlier. Though Patricia is tired of intervening between Richard and Looksmart, she tries to summon Beauty calmly, as if “to suggest to the two men that nothing irreparable has happened yet.”
Patricia is presumably worried Looksmart may kill Richard for murdering Grace. Given her affection for Looksmart and her distaste for Richard, she’s more likely worried about the legal consequences of murder for Looksmart than about Richard’s possible death.
Themes
Looksmart. Richard looks greatly aged but recognizable to Looksmart. They shake hands, and Looksmart gives his name, Phiwayinkosi Ndlovu, but says Richard would remember him as Looksmart. Richard asks how they know each other. Looksmart says they knew each other on the farm. Richard, disturbed, asks about the name Looksmart. Looksmart says it’s a name “like Baas is a name.” Richard asks whether Looksmart is wearing his suit for a funeral; Looksmart, sensing Patricia’s desire that he “leave [Richard] to his ignominious fate,” says he visited the farm “to shed a bit of light."
Baas is a word in Afrikaans, the language spoken by white populations in South Africa descended from Dutch colonizers. It means “boss,” and the Wileys’ Black employees in the novel sometimes refer to Richard that way. When Looksmart says that Looksmart’s a name “like Baas is a name,” he seems to mean it’s a name that communicates a history of colonization and racial violence. When Richard asks whether Looksmart is dressed for a funeral, he conveys the racist assumption that a Black person could only wear nice clothes for some special occasion. Despite Richard’s crimes, Looksmart seems inclined to let him suffer the “ignominious fate” of cognitive decline and claims his visit’s purpose was “to shed a bit of light”—hinting that Patricia was correct to suppose Looksmart’s visit was primarily about her and the pain her racism and blindness caused him, not about Richard.
Themes
Richard says Looksmart reminds him of his Uncle Pete. His tone “suggest[s] that everything, in the end, can be reduced to nothing more than a joke.” He launches into a story: the last time Richard saw Uncle Pete, who was allergic to peanuts, Uncle Pete told him that every time he’d visited Richard, he had been sneaking into his daughter’s room and “fucking her.” Patricia interjects, “Your what?” Looksmart points out Richard doesn’t have a daughter. Richard goes on: he forgave Uncle Pete but admitted in turn that he snuck peanuts into their dessert. About to guffaw at his own joke, Richard begins to cough.
Though Patricia and Looksmart make jokes, both like the idea that actions have serious consequences. By contrast, the novel has characterized Richard as humorless, yet he now insinuates “everything, in the end, can be reduced to nothing more than a joke.” Notably, Richard’s joke is not only an offensive joke about sexual violence but cruel to Patricia, given that their real daughter was stillborn. This scene connects Richard’s lack of moral seriousness or sense to his single bad joke—at which no one laughs—and therefore implies that his evil actions and his inability to use humor to connect with others are related phenomena.
Themes
When Looksmart says he’s glad he doesn’t know Uncle Pete, Richard snaps: “Do you know there was a time I would have had you whipped?” Looksmart, aware everyone expects him to kill Richard, replies he knows everything Richard could tell him and he’s going to depart. Looksmart wishes Patricia goodnight; unable to smile at her, he thinks Richard “has ruined all that, as he always did.” Patricia asks whether Looksmart will make “a new start.” Dodging the question, Looksmart says he’ll devote himself to family and finances. When Patricia asks whether he'll visit her, Looksmart lies and says he will. He leaves.
When Looksmart responds to Richard’s disgusting joke without laughter but with a cutting joke of his own, Richard reacts by referring to his former racial, economic, violent power over Looksmart as his mother’s employer in a white-supremacist country: Richard could have had Looksmart whipped because Richard was a white “boss” and Looksmart was a Black child. This reaction shows clearly that Richard wasn’t attempting to connect with Patricia or Looksmart through his joke but to attack them. Looksmart’s belief that Richard has “ruined” Looksmart’s goodbye with Patricia “as he always did” hints that while Looksmart blames Patricia for her racism, he believes their relationship failed in part due to Richard. As he leaves, Looksmart avoids Patricia’s question about “a new start,” which implies he doesn’t believe he’ll be granted even a metaphorical rebirth after these events.
Themes
Bheki. Bheki sees Looksmart exit the house and catch sight of the dog, Ethunzini. Though Looksmart seems “ready to attack or be attacked,” the dog simply looks at him tiredly from inside its basket.
Looksmart’s readiness “to attack or be attacked” by the Wileys’ dog shows he still fears white violence in general and what the Wileys can do to him specifically. Yet this old dog’s nonreaction to him suggests he has, in some sense, “won” his interaction with Patricia and Richard.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia and Richard stay silent, listening to Looksmart leave. Patricia notes it’s unusual that the dog doesn’t make any noise at Looksmart’s passage.
Patricia and Richard’s attentive listening to Looksmart’s exit, together with the dog’s silence, underscores that Looksmart has “won” the interaction—he has come away safe, having forcefully expressed his view of the Wileys’ past.
Themes
Richard asks who Looksmart was. Patricia, meanwhile, stares at the rock Richard put on the mantel. Recognizing it as basalt she used to decorate Rachel’s grave, she demands to know what Richard has done. He says he couldn’t find “it.” When Patricia insists Rachel isn’t an “it,” Richard replies: “It wasn’t a child. It was a joke. She was trying to provoke me.”
When Richard says that some unnamed woman “was trying to provoke” him with a “joke,” it reminds the reader Richard views humor only as a weapon. As the novel hasn’t mentioned any “she” attempting to provoke Richard on the subject of Rachel, the reader is left to wonder whether there are more revelations to come about Rachel’s death or whether, in digging around the bloodwoods, Richard was searching for some “it” other than Rachel’s skeleton.
Themes
Patricia demands Richard say Rachel’s name. When he refuses, she demands he say Grace’s name. He says doctors told him to abstain from “stress.” Patricia stands—shocking Richard—and says she knows he recognized Looksmart. She asks whether his memory loss is even real. Richard says yes, he recognized Looksmart—and if Patricia had taken Richard’s advice, she wouldn’t have arranged for Looksmart’s education and “giv[en] him ideas above himself.” When Patricia points out Looksmart owns the farm now, Richard asks sarcastically whether Looksmart will “open a shebeen” on the property.
By demanding that Richard say both Rachel’s and Grace’s names, Patricia places her dead baby and Grace on the same level of importance, hinting she may regret her past racism against Grace. When Richard says that education gave Looksmart “ideas above himself,” by contrast, he expresses the racist idea that Black people shouldn’t aspire to learning or success. His joke suggesting that Looksmart might “open a shebeen”—an unlicensed bar—on the property is likewise racist, another example of humor Richard uses to wound.
Themes
Patricia demands Richard admit what he did to Grace. Richard says, “it was a lie” and he “never believed a word.” Exhausted, Patricia sits. She knows she’ll hurt later and contemplates taking all her pain medication—she never thought she’d reach Durban anyway. Richard says, “There was no name [. . .]. No name for it.” When she asks what he means, he asks whether she doesn’t “actually know.” Patricia says he killed Grace with the dog. When Richard asks whether “that’s all,” Patricia asks if he feels guilty. He sneers at her for judging him and calls her a misogynistic obscenity. She yells at him to leave.
When Patricia tries to talk to Richard about Grace, his disjointed responses about “a lie” and something with “no name”—together with his question about whether the murder is ”all” Patricia has realized—suggest that there is more information about Grace’s death that the novel has yet to reveal. Patricia’s contemplation of suicide hints both that learning of Richard’s crime has taken a terrible toll on her and that she doesn’t really believe she’s capable of a fresh start.
Themes
After Richard leaves, Patricia stands with difficulty and calls for Looksmart. She gets into her wheelchair and wheels herself to the front door, where she sees the receding taillights of his car. Calling to him one more time, Patricia isn’t sure what she’s trying to accomplish. She just wants to keep talking to him and finding out more about his life, something she knows isn’t going to happen. His taillights disappear. Beauty, now at Patricia’s side, asks, “Mesis?” Patricia says she wanted to “thank” Looksmart, though she isn’t sure what she means by that. Beauty, wheeling Patricia inside, says Looksmart “will understand.”
In the novel, cars represent unequal access to economic privilege so Looksmart’s speedy vehicular departure suggests that his wealth has helped place him finally beyond Patricia’s power, even if they still care about each other. As Patricia and Looksmart have failed to fully understand each other, Beauty’s claim that Looksmart “will understand” that Patricia wanted to “thank” him seems more like a comforting lie than anything else.
Themes
Beauty. Beauty wheels Patricia into the bathroom. Once Patricia is done, Beauty reenters and flushes. Embarrassed, Patricia ignores Beauty while Beauty “make[s] herself as small as possible.” As Beauty gets Patricia into bed, she wonders whether Durban will be any different from the farm. When Beauty has put Patricia to bed, she goes to find Richard.
Though Patricia is physically dependent on Beauty, Patricia’s wealth and status as an employer mean that Beauty has to make “herself as small as possible” for Patricia’s comfort—thus, Patricia is still the one with the power. When Beauty wonders whether Durban will be any different than the farm, she seems implicitly to be wondering whether the move will bring any of them a fresh start.
Themes
