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
Two days later, Mr. Benn gives Benjamin a position on the crew of his pilot boat, since Kaliel September is gone. Book is one of the sailors in charge of teaching Benjamin to row properly. Benjamin sees Nina again, and she worries about him when he goes out to sea to do dangerous work as part of Mr. Benn’s crew. He doesn’t understand her behavior—sometimes she seems glad to see him, other times she wishes he’d stayed in Long Kloof.
Although Benjamin’s confrontation with Elias and Barta was not quite what he needed, it nevertheless seems to have paved the way for Benjamin to advance in his quest to become an oarsman. Because Benjamin is back to thinking he’s Lukas, this makes his relationship with Nina awkward, and she in turn acts erratically toward him.
Themes
Eventually, Nina confronts Benjamin about how he talks to her less. Benjamin struggles to explain his conflicted feelings, and Nina gets angry at him. One day, Mr. Benn tells Benjamin he sees a sadness in Benjamin’s eyes, even after getting his position on the crew. He asks Benjamin his name, and when Benjamin says, “Lukas van Rooyen,” Mr. Benn asks why he sounds so angry about that. Benjamin says he feels nothing.
The fact that Mr. Benn still sees sadness in Benjamin’s eyes—just as Selling did earlier—confirms that Benjamin’s trip to the forest didn’t solve his identity issues. His obvious discomfort with the name “Lukas van Rooyen” confirms that he still has issues to resolve.
Themes
One day, Mr. Benn gathers up all his sailors. A brig is out at sea, flying flags that indicate that it has run out of freshwater and needs help from a pilot, but Book tells Benjamin it may be a trick. Book feels a storm coming and waits for Mr. Benn to call them to help the brig, but Mr. Benn’s call doesn’t come. It’s been four days since Benjamin last saw Nina.
The brig offers the opportunity for Benjamin to get his first real taste of life as an oarsman. This passage shows how, like Fiela, Mr. Benn values patience—despite the ship’s urgent need for water, Mr. Benn doesn’t want to bring the ship into the rocks if there’s a chance of a storm while the ship is still in a dangerous area.
Themes
All of a sudden, Book notices the brig trying to come through the rocky waters without a pilot. Book and Benjamin start running. Book says Mr. Benn will want to show this brig who’s boss for being too hasty. The brig, however, makes it through the dangerous area without taking any damage. Nevertheless, Mr. Benn gets his crew into the pilot-boat to follow the brig. All of a sudden, an unexpectedly big wave comes up and hits the brig, smashing it into Emu Rock.
The brig disrespects Mr. Benn’s expertise by trying to rush through the rocky area on its own. While it seems at first that maybe Mr. Benn was being overcautious, the big wave vindicates his patience, showing the dangers of acting brashly and underestimating the power of the sea, as the captain of the brig did.
Themes
Get the entire Fiela’s Child LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mr. Benn orders his crew to keep rowing. All of a sudden, he points out a seaman from the brig in the water, asking Benjamin to try to save the man with his oar. Benjamin tries, but the seaman has no strength left and disappears back into the water. Eventually, Benjamin and Mr. Benn make it back to the shore where some of the surviving crew members of the brig are. Benjamin feels guilty about not being able to save the man, but Mr. Benn says there’s nothing more he could’ve done.
Benjamin has a grim encounter with death firsthand, showing him how harsh life at sea can be. Benjamin’s guilt at not being able to save the drowning sailor—even though there’s seemingly nothing he could have done—perhaps connects to his feelings of guilt about being unable to “save” Elias and Barta by being Lukas.
Themes
On the shore, Benjamin tells Nina he saw a man die. She tries to comfort him by holding him against her, but the “Lukas” in him still keeps them apart. Later, however, as Benjamin reflects back on watching the anonymous sailor die, he realizes that perhaps Lukas has died too. He knows there’s something inside him that can’t be Lukas. He wonders why Barta and the magistrate both swore he was Lukas when it wasn’t true. He doesn’t know the real truth about his identity and feels like it’s a secret locked inside him, but he feels sure he isn’t Lukas based on his feelings for Nina.
Coming face-to-face with death offers Benjamin another important coming-of-age moment. This passage shows a lot of introspection on Benjamin’s part, illustrating how as he grows up, he becomes more proactive about trying to make sense of his life and the world. Unlike the more pragmatic (and perhaps at times cynical) Fiela, Benjamin can’t think of why Barta or the magistrate would lie, showing how much he still has to learn about the world.
Themes
Soon after, Kaliel September suddenly comes back, looking sickly. Benjamin breaks the news to Mr. Benn that he has to go to the Forest for a couple days.
Because Benjamin now knows that his last visit to the Forest didn’t resolve the “sadness” inside of him, he decides he needs to go try again.
Themes
Benjamin goes back to the van Rooyen house. Elias, Barta, and Kristoffel are all sitting around having a meal. Elias looks healthier than before. Barta seems to know why he’s come, but they make small talk for a while. At last, however, Barta breaks down and admits she took the wrong child that day in court. She admits that Benjamin isn’t Lukas. At first Elias and Kristoffel act like she’s being delusional. But Barta is determined to go to the magistrate and get the burden off her conscience.
Elias’s healthier state reveals that some time has passed since Benjamin’s last visit. It seems likely that Barta was on the verge of divulging her secret about Benjamin not being Lukas for a while the last time Benjamin was home, but it took one more visit for her to finally get the strength to admit it. Her determination to get to the bottom of Benjamin’s identity could suggest a selfish desire to clear her conscience, but it could also suggest that she, like Fiela, wants what’s best for Benjamin—even if doing so necessitates the loss of her “son.”
Themes
Barta explains that when she went to the court, she had to pick “Lukas” out of a lineup of five children, but before she walked into the room, one of the census-takers whispered to her “the one wearing the blue shirt.” Benjamin was the only one wearing a blue shirt. In the present, Benjamin thinks about how this one sentence changed his whole fate, including several years of his life.
Barta’s story exposes the bias of the supposedly impartial justice system. Barta knew about this lie all along, and yet she continued to trust the magistrate—or perhaps she was just too afraid to go against the status quo. Barta represents the many people in South Africa who didn’t actively implement racist policies like the magistrate but who nevertheless enabled them by failing to challenge them.
Themes
Benjamin feels a storm inside him. He decides he needs to see the census-taker who determined his fate. He goes to the magistrate’s office and finds the man, who looks older but mostly the same. The man asks who Benjamin is, and he replies “Nobody.” He leaves and goes to the sea, where he finally begins to relax.
Benjamin’s declaration that he’s “nobody” recalls a famous scene in the Odyssey when the hero Odysseus answers that his name is “nobody” to try to trick a cyclops. The Odyssey was all about a long journey home, over the course of a decade, and so in some ways it parallels Benjamin’s own long journey to find his “home”—his true identity. By answering “nobody,” Benjamin acknowledges both how he might never know his biological parents and also how this uncertainty makes him a blank slate, free to determine what type of person he wants to be on his own terms.
Themes
