Analysis of “The Journey to the Brothers’ Farm”
Sometimes in life, something so terrible happens to you that it haunts you for the rest of your life.
Even though it happened long ago, it might still feel, as though it is fresh in your memory. This is the kind of burden that has weighted on Annelie Louw’s shoulders for thirty years and when faced with her demon she makes a drastic decision.
A first person narrator tells Pippa Gough’s ‘The Journey to the Brother’s Farm’. We follow the narrator Annelie Louw’s flashbacks to her childhood, and her description of what took place at the
Brothers’ Farm as she writes her statement about the event to the police. The first person narrator is often unreliable and Annelie lies in her sworn statement, which suggests that she is too, at least for the police. However, the short story focuses upon the protagonist’s feelings about a specific event, and as we follow her thoughts and she does not seem to be in any form of denial, she is trustworthy to the reader.
The composition of the story is based around the protagonist’s statement, and it is not arranged in a chronological order, but jumps back and forth between the statement and her memories. This gives the reader an insight into Annelie’s thoughts and feelings about the event that is not visible in the police statement. The story largely follows the Hollywood-model, with the childhood flashback as a prelude and her memories until she meets Thabo and the small sequences from the statement as a presentation and elaboration. The prelude serves as an explanation to why she does not turn Hendriks away instantly. In the next part, her relationships to the characters involved are explained. The point of no return is when she meets Thabo, and her otherwise ordinary day turns upside down. The conflict escalates, as Thabo explains what is going on and
Annelie proceeds