28 pages • 56 minutes read
Dalene MattheeFiela's Child (Fiela se Kind)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Wrong People in Power
When the census workers come to question the Komoeties, Fiela is right to be nervous. She knows they can take Benjamin away on a whim, and they do, even though they have reason to suspect there is more to the story of Benjamin’s presence in her home than she reveals. They have the power to insist that he leave home and be taken to the magistrate. The magistrate, acting on inaccurate information from Barta, is then able to install him with the van Rooyen’s and change his identity with the stroke of a pen. He is then able to bar Fiela from pursuing justice, as his word is law.
Later, when it is revealed that Barta chose Benjamin out of the lineup while being manipulated by one of the unethical census workers, the theme is further reinforced: problems arise when the powerful do not have everyone’s best interests at heart. This is a particularly intractable problem when the powerful are also agents of systemic racism, as was the case in South Africa during the time portrayed in the novel.
Systematized Racism
South Africa has always been a hotbed of racial tension. The apartheid structure has maintained a massive division between South African ethnic groups, and the Komoeties are a brilliant illustration of the tragedies, unfairness, and frustration that result. Racism is always a venomous thing, but when the government and the governing race endorse it, there is almost no hope for those exploited by racism to escape from it. It limits their aspirations, their careers, and even the ways in which they are able to think about their own existence. Fiela and Benjamin spend much of the book at the mercy of policy decisions that alter huge swaths of their lives, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Identity
The theme of identity is most vividly portrayed through the struggle between Benjamin and his alter ego, Lukas. He literally does not know who he is for much of the novel. When he acts as if he is Lukas for long enough, he begins to think of himself as Lukas. In this way, he becomes more Lukas than Benjamin for a time. He lives as if he is Lukas, he answers to the name, and his memories of being Benjamin dwindle with the years. It is not until he begins to feel romantic love for Nina that the question forces itself back upon him in urgent fashion.
Nina is another example of someone with a conflicted identity, although in her case, it is a simple matter of her father not letting her live the way she wants to. As a child, Nina wants to be in the forest, and hates all decorum and ceremony. She hates anything that feels constricting.
