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 finds a place to take shelter for the night. He wakes up the next day, feeling good about finally leaving the Forest behind. He gets up and goes walking, coming across a man sitting next to a white flag. Benjamin asks the man for work on a boat, but the man accuses him of being a vagrant with no useful skills. Benjamin decides he has to learn some skills on his own.
Once again, after the end of a hopeful previous chapter, the start of a new chapter introduces new difficulties. Benjamin realizes that after spending so many years making wood beams in the forest, he doesn’t have the skills for any other jobs yet, and so learning these skills becomes his next challenge.
Themes
Benjamin keeps walking and comes across a boatman and asks the man to teach him to row. The boatman asks if Benjamin has a boat. Benjamin doesn’t have one yet. The boatman says it’s unlucky that Benjamin talked to Mr. Benn (the man by the white flag) when Mr. Benn was in such a bad mood because Mr. Benn actually does need a new rower to replace Kaliel September on his pilot-boat.
Benjamin finds that even though he has finally become independent from the van Rooyens, he’ll still need help from others to get by. Mr. Benn and Kaliel September will fill a role similar to the one his family used to play, first in Wolwekraal and then in the Forest.
Themes
The boatman tries to persuade Benjamin to give up looking for work on the pilot-boat, but Benjamin remains persistent. At last, the boatman says he can’t pay Benjamin money but can offer him food and shelter if he helps him with catching oysters and fish. The boatman tells Benjamin a little about himself: he is in fact Kaliel September, so Benjamin would be replacing him. Kaliel is waiting for a boat to come in and has no idea when it will arrive—it could be tomorrow, or it could be in a year.
This passage illustrates how difficult the economic situation could be on the Cape of South Africa, even for a young white man like Benjamin. Without a family to support him, Benjamin finds help from the outsiders of society. Kaliel’s constant waiting for his boat to come in reflects the area’s poor economic conditions, and this in turn reflects Kaliel’s inability to control his own life.
Themes
Kaliel September’s mother was “Coloured” and his father was Norwegian. He feels that he has the sea in his blood but that a Forest person like Benjamin should be careful around water. Benjamin introduces himself to Kaliel as “Lukas.” Kaliel explains that he just got back from taking planks from the ghost ship, which was a ship from France called the Phoenix with nothing on it except for a few corpses.
The name Phoenix is fitting for the ghost ship. A phoenix is a mythological creature that dies and then rises from its own ashes. Likewise, the Phoenix has “died” by becoming a ghost ship, only to be resurrected when Kaliel repurposes its planks.
Themes
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Benjamin is impressed as Kaliel September shows him around the area and points out his house, which is small but durable in the harsh conditions near the water. Kaliel made the house himself from parts of ships. Kaliel takes Benjamin inside the house, and although there’s a fierce storm outside, the house stays strong. Kaliel begins explaining the work Benjamin would do for him, but the one thing Benjamin refuses is to lay traps to catch blue-bucks (a type of antelope).
Kaliel’s house full of parts from many different ships provides a visual symbol of his many years of experience at sea. This experience has fortified him, as represented by his strong house. Blue-bucks are extinct today (and were already extinct in the 1980s when Matthee wrote this novel), and so Benjamin’s refusal to trap them shows that he respects this endangered species, perhaps modeling the respect for nature that Fiela and Nina have instilled in him.
Themes
Kaliel September leads Benjamin around for three days, showing him his new responsibilities. Kaliel complains that he knows as much as Mr. Benn, but Mr. Benn gets to sit up on a hill and take a bigger salary while Kaliel continues to do dangerous work. Kaliel says if anything were to happen to Mr. Benn, Kaliel is the only one who could take his place—although he might never get the opportunity.
Kaliel helps Benjamin while at the same time potentially taking advantage of him, using Benjamin to earn some extra money and not paying him, while Kaliel himself works for Mr. Benn. Unlike selfish Elias, however, Kaliel seems less interested in amassing wealth and more concerned with just trying to scrape by however he can.
Themes
Reluctantly, Benjamin helps Kaliel September set some blue-buck traps. Benjamin remains determined to get a job on a ship, but Kaliel September explains that Mr. Benn already has replacements lined up if anything happens to his oarsmen, and even if Mr. Benn were to fall off a cliff, no one would put Kaliel in charge of a ship. Benjamin wonders why, but Kaliel refuses to say, just talking about how sailors are superstitious.
Benjamin’s decision to help Kaliel trap blue-bucks represents his acknowledgment of the hard choices it takes to survive on his own. He is willing to put aside his ideals if necessary to survive. While Kaliel doesn’t say why the other sailors would never look to him as a leader, it’s possible it relates back to his earlier admission that he has a Coloured father.
Themes
Benjamin wants to go back to check on Nina at Miss Weatherbury’s. Kaliel September accuses him of running back to the Forest. He warns Benjamin that Nina should stay away from the hills near the ship, because seamen are always looking to kidnap white girls. Benjamin heads back, but Miss Weatherbury lets him know that Nina ran away three days ago.
After getting his first taste of freedom from his Forest life, Benjamin decides that the one part of his old life that he does want to keep is Nina. Nina taught him about nature, and so she is a bridge between the previous phase of his life and the current one.
Themes
