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Richard Wiley
Bheki, Patricia Wiley’s driver and gardener, is a taciturn, late-middle-aged Black man who wears “impeccable blue overalls.” According to Patricia, she offered to get him a good education while he was growing up on the Wileys’ farm but, when he showed more interest in cars than school, taught him to drive instead. Bheki knows that the Wileys’ domestic employee Beauty has been in love with him for a long time, and though he finds her adoration gratifying, he’s not at all attracted to her and has never returned her affection. Late in life he married a woman named Phumelele, with whom he has a young disabled son, Bongani. At the novel’s beginning, he is planning to move away to the city Durban with the Wileys, because he believes he’ll be able to get help for Bongani in an urban area that isn’t available near the Wileys’ farm. Though successful, educated Looksmart holds Bheki in contempt for serving Patricia all his life, Looksmart nevertheless offers to help Bheki get a new job and help for Bongani on the farm so he doesn’t have to keep working for the Wileys. Bheki is convinced by Looksmart’s argument that Black South Africans should support each other rather than accept white people’s charity. At the novel’s end, Bheki drives the Wileys to Durban, though he plans to quit and return to the farm, where Looksmart will get him a job.
Bheki Quotes in The Dream House
The The Dream House quotes below are all either spoken by Bheki or refer to Bheki. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
He knows that Bheki won’t refuse a cigarette, in spite of his veneer of dignity. Underneath, he’s as needy as the rest of them.
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Each time, the house is less built. Is it that he is going further back in time? Is he going backwards the more he runs? If so then when will he stop? What is he aimed at? He stands on the large concrete slab in the middle of nowhere and ponders this, and eventually he sits.
It is not so much that he is dead. It is more that no one appears to have been born. They still have their whole lives ahead of them. Nothing that needs to be undone has yet been done.
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Chapter 5
Quotes
Looksmart has promised him a job and he has said he will send Bongani to a special school, so that his disabilities will not hold him back. Looksmart said it was time for black people to help each other. That the time of getting help from the whites is finished. And he agrees with this. He thinks it is time he walked away from this distasteful dance he has been engaged in for so long: where he has to disturb the grave of a child just because the Madam has decided it.
As they labour along the road, the image of the black puppy keeps finding its way back into her head: the way it would run along the fence of the dog-run after the girls going toward the dairy, stumbling over its paws, while she sat back and laughed at it.
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Get the entire The Dream House LitChart as a printable PDF.
Bheki Quotes in The Dream House
The The Dream House quotes below are all either spoken by Bheki or refer to Bheki. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
He knows that Bheki won’t refuse a cigarette, in spite of his veneer of dignity. Underneath, he’s as needy as the rest of them.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Each time, the house is less built. Is it that he is going further back in time? Is he going backwards the more he runs? If so then when will he stop? What is he aimed at? He stands on the large concrete slab in the middle of nowhere and ponders this, and eventually he sits.
It is not so much that he is dead. It is more that no one appears to have been born. They still have their whole lives ahead of them. Nothing that needs to be undone has yet been done.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5
Quotes
Looksmart has promised him a job and he has said he will send Bongani to a special school, so that his disabilities will not hold him back. Looksmart said it was time for black people to help each other. That the time of getting help from the whites is finished. And he agrees with this. He thinks it is time he walked away from this distasteful dance he has been engaged in for so long: where he has to disturb the grave of a child just because the Madam has decided it.
As they labour along the road, the image of the black puppy keeps finding its way back into her head: the way it would run along the fence of the dog-run after the girls going toward the dairy, stumbling over its paws, while she sat back and laughed at it.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
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