My understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of Fiela’s Child increased through the interactive orals by the realization that Knysna was influenced culturally and linguistically by European colonization. The arrival of these countries brought discrimination, racism, and a drastic exploitation of not only the people, but of the land. Although throughout recorded history the African people have lived in conflict, there was always a balance kept with the land that was destroyed by the entrance of the European colonists.
Knysna is a crucial setting that held different meanings for the principal characters. Benjamin, taken from the open skies of the Long Kloof, found only sorrow in the forest which for him, and his adopted mother Fiela, represented separation and imprisonment. This same symbolic prison was viewed as a refuge to Nina, who saw the forest as her protector and playmate. Whereas Benjamin was confined by the forest, Nina was liberated by it. To Elias, Nina’s father and tormentor, the forest represented sustenance, trees and animals there for his limitless conquest. One can say that Knysna was transfixed in people’s hearts revealing the very nature of the meaning of life for the characters.
We also addressed the life of the author Mrs. Matthee. She explained the unique patterns of life in the forest. It’s very interesting how she projected the identity crisis in her book, as in the case of Lukas, whose origin was unknown. When Matthee wrote Fiela’s Child she was living in the Long Kloof confirming her first-hand knowledge of the setting.
In research about Knysna, white’s superiority is presented as an ineffable issue. The highest authority in Knysna (the magistrate), was a white English man to whom the...
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