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Chapter 26
Themes
and Colors
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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