Commenting on Paton's fiction, Fuller wrote. Emily is one of Pieter's three sisters. For Old Jakob could not act otherwise and still maintain the purity of race as the highest law. The reserves, however, accounted for only seven percent of the total land. Pieter, Jakob, Sophie, and the rest of the family go on a picnic. 24, No. • Pieter denies it repeatedly until evidence mounts against him. He is a married man with two children, highly respected in the rural Afrikaner community and, indeed, the kind of man in whose presence other men feel constrained to subdue loud talk or off-color jokes. The phalarope of the title is a shorebird found in Africa and other countries. In both world wars, Smuts led South Africa against Germany; in World War I, he led troops as a military leader; during World War II, he was prime minister, and under his leadership South Africa entered the war. When Sophie reveals her dislike of those city women who wear trousers of various colors, she dwells on the point that "it is the yellow trousers that anger me most of all." In the hope of preventing the discovery of his victim's identity, which might lead to his own discovery, "the man Smith," with his wife's complicity, cut off and hid the murdered girl's head. The web of contributive causes includes elements that we may tentatively distinguish as psychological, spiritual, physical, and instinctive. . Even before this, she realizes that Pieter is a deeply divided person in many respects. This Act outlawed sexual relationships between blacks and whites, and later the Act would be expanded to forbid sexual relationships between whites and any other race. The point need not be insisted upon, but it provides, like Book Three of Cry, the Beloved Country, another instance of Paton's distrust of abstract utopian, or totalitarian, schemes that substitute an inhuman perfection for the flesh and blood realities of the human condition. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope Tales from a Troubled Land by. Having never married, she regards Pieter as the son she never had, and dotes on him shamelessly. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Having impregnated one of his servant girls, he panics because he knows that it will be obvious that he is the child's father. I argue that Paton indicts Afrikaner Christian nationalism by dramatising a paradox inherent in it. 12-16. When Steyn answers that he thought the prisoner's court date was the next week, Pieter orders him to get the written instructions that Pieter himself had made out for Steyn. As befitted his exclusive nationalism, he was a lover of all things South African, including the birds of the veld. The Volk is the separate and unique Afrikaner People descended from the Voortrekkers; the Kerk is the Afrikaner branch of the Dutch Reformed Church to which, ideally, all the Volk adhere; the Taal is the Afrikaans language which, in place of a national boundary, identifies their nationhood; and the Land is the soil of South Africa, sacred to the Afrikaner Volk in almost the same sense that the Promised Land was sacred to the Israelites. He does not even set the novel with any obviousness in the post-1948 period, and he ignores the immediate social and economic manifestations of apartheid. In International Review, Irma Ned Stevens named the point of view in Too Late the Phalarope as one of the novel's notable strengths, adding that Sophie's telling of the story is carried out in wisdom and love. It is an actual bird about whose habits old Jakob, in fact, knew more than "the Englishman" who wrote the book. Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. In Too Late the Phalarope, Paton depicts morality as something that resides within and also as something that is imposed by external forces, such as church and government. She explains: And now as I write I am like a woman whose man is dead, because of some accident that was not foreseen, or because of some doctor that was not called, or because of some word that sounded like another; and she reproaches herself, and thinks that if for years she had not said … let's go tomorrow, or if she had said, let's go by the lower road, perhaps her man would be alive again. Because of this incident, Steyn is humiliated and vows to destroy Pieter. This passage is repeated almost verbatim at the end of chapter 35, after Pieter has confessed his crime to the captain. In the society that made the iron laws there is no hope of public forgiveness or restoration. First, however, we should note the simple ease with which Paton solves a literary problem that many critics have declared to be insurmountable: the problem of reconciling a Christian viewpoint with tragedy as a literary form. The final proof is a small seashell placed in Pieter's pocket by Stephanie. Words are in some cases considered as immutable as if written in stone; in other cases they have the potential to bring about life-changing outcomes. A large party is planned for Jakob's birthday. After completing his education at Pietermaritzburg College and Natal University, Paton taught for three years in rural Ixopo, which would later serve as the setting for Cry, the Beloved Country. It is chiefly through the contrasting attitudes of old Jakob and Tante Sophie that we see the opposing themes of destruction and restoration brought into confrontation; and here the sacrificial justice demanded by the iron law outweighs the compassionate justice exhorted by Christ to his followers. At this early stage, much of this framework of laws was still only 'projected,' but among those already passed into law, Paton notes: "The present Government has amended and widened the Immorality Act of the Hertzog Government … It has passed a Mixed Marriages Act which now forbids marriages between whites and non-whites.". He has a wife, Nella, and children, and lives near his parents, aunt, and siblings. Paton, Alan, Journey Continued: An Autobiography, Scribner, 1988. Numerous critics point to the biblical elements present in Too Late the Phalarope, as well as to the novel's similarities to a Greek tragedy. As second-in-command, he is resented by Sergeant Steyn, who is older and more experienced than Pieter, and yet must report to him. Pieter's mother's first name is never revealed in the story although her personality is described on several occasions. Paton's use of Sophie as the story's narrator is unusual because she is a secondary character yet has special knowledge of Pieter's thoughts and feelings by virtue of having Pieter's diary as a resource. As he makes his way home, he is covered with the smell of the kakiebos (a weed with a pungent smell) he had lain down in, and he feels that he is stinking with corruption, with a smell that will travel through the entire town, notifying everyone of his deed. 2, Spring 1983, pp. Toward the end of the twentieth century, as apartheid began to crumble, so did these laws. Jakob is Pieter's harsh and distant father, whose physical stature matches his strong personality despite his limp. But whereas Smith's terror is merely implied, Pa-ton builds up Pieter's mounting terror in great detail, and skillfully involves the reader. Because Pieter is presented as such a noble and charming man at the beginning of the book (in fact, Sophie compares him to a god), they deem him inaccessible to readers, and they are not particularly sympathetic to his guilt and weakness. 2, June 1984, pp. Too Late the Phalarope was published in 1953, and although most critics regard it as his best work, Paton's reputation as a writer rests largely on his first novel. Too late the phalarope Item Preview > remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. In the following essay, Callan examines Too Late the Phalarope by comparing and contrasting it with Paton's first novel, Cry the Beloved Country. Pieter uses the power of the written word by writing a secret diary, which he gives to his aunt at the end of the book. An essential element of tragedy, in addition to the flaw in the hero's character, is that the fate of those enmeshed in its web is determined, like that of King Oedipus, by a power outside their control. And old Jakob read on, blind to the irony that "the most terrible words" of the Psalm are explicitly directed against the man who "who remembered not to show mercy.". Stephanie lives with Esther and brews and sells illegal liquor to support herself. He sets a trap for Pieter, and Stephanie, out of fear for the security of her child, carries out Steyn's purpose. Cry, the Beloved Country centers on the black experience in South Africa, while Too Late the Phalarope depicts the lives of Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers who traveled to South Africa three hundred years ago). The act of reading figures into the lives of the characters in very different ways. When the new Social Welfare Department opens in Venterspan, his hometown, Japie is sent to run it. Paton is very clear in his message that breaking political and moral laws brings severe consequences, just or not. Why or why not? In "Too Late the Phalarope," published in 1953, five years after "Cry," Paton shows exactly how apartheid negatively affected whites, as well. What do you think are the three most important things he has done for the cause? Too Late the Phalarope is the second novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing Cry, the Beloved Country. Pieter was conscious of his problem, and could have sought help. Too Late the Phalarope is the second novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing Cry, the Beloved Country.. He will not even mention it, and he always refers to the author as "the Englishman." Thus she provides another fictional parallel for the qualities of Edith Rheinallt Jones that Paton describes in "A Deep Experience." A man named Smith is sentenced to hang for murder. Scribner) Too Late the Phalarope is the second novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing Cry, the Beloved Country. Anna occupies Tante Sophie's thoughts to a surprising extent—wholly out of proportion to her two brief appearances in the novel. share. As an illustration, refer to Paton's use of door imagery. It is in this context of an ideal of racial purity that classified race-mixture as the ultimate sin—the sin "against this highest law" as the textbook puts it—that Paton sets the tragedy of Pieter van Vlaanderen. --Adapted from jacket. At the end of the story, Kap-pie is one of the few people who stays by Pieter's side. Alan Paton drew heavily on his own experiences when he wrote Cry, the Beloved Country, for he had taught school in Ixopo and had been principal of a reformatory, too, where he had dealt with many young men like Absalom Kumalo.. Paton was born January 11, 1903, in the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, the eldest child of English settlers, James and Eunice Paton. He is respected for being tender and understanding toward blacks as well as whites, an attitude he developed at a young age. This did not, however, slow him down in his fight against racism and apartheid on his native soil. This difference in their estimates of where the duties of patriotism lie constitutes one of the causes of friction between Jakob and his son Pieter. Another actual event of the period—or an account closely based on it—helps Paton to establish the atmosphere of obsession with racial purity in a society where the most unforgivable thing is to break "the iron law that no white man might touch a black woman"; and that the most terrible thing in the world is to have such a transgression discovered. 249-54. No_Favorite. It goes deeper into the faith where many Christians are frightened to go. So it was found expedient to agree that men already in the armed forces and police should be permitted either to retain their positions at home or to volunteer for service abroad. A phalarope is any of three living species of slender-necked shorebirds in the genus Phalaropus of the bird family Scolopacidae.. Phalaropes are close relatives of the shanks and tattlers, the Actitis and Terek sandpipers, and also of the turnstones and calidrids. One psychological cause of Pieter's transgression is deeply rooted in the duality of his own nature. The captain's distant mood makes Pieter wonder if he has heard of the crime. This interaction brings about one of his "black" moods that haunts him throughout the story. He does not joke or laugh, having lost his son in gunfire and his wife soon afterwards. It gives a brief historical sketch of the origins and development of South Africa's racial groups, and indicates the current status of each. While the term is primarily applied to British literature, critics generally consider Paton to have been a modernist author at the time Too Late the Phalarope was published. They agree to meet at night, and when they do, she seduces him, even though he promised himself he would not have sex with her again. There was then a law in force against illicit sexual relations between white and non-white. Chapters 1 through 19 may be said, therefore, to comprise The Book of Temptation; Chapters 20 through 39, The Book of Retribution. Paton's commitment to social justice and compassion, which rises so movingly from the pages of Cry, the Beloved Country, here finds such unity of composition, such austerity of expression, such integrity of faith and such universal meaning that Too Late the Phalarope stands as an exceptional book. To a small group of critics, the setting is too specific in time and place, and the culture of the community is too foreign, to be applicable to contemporary life. As has already been remarked, Too Late the Phalarope resembles Cry, the Beloved Country in certain aspects of its artistic method. Jakob van Vlaanderen was one of those who saw the war as "an English war" in which no true Afrikaner should participate: "And when his son Pieter took the red oath and had gone to war, he would bear no mention of his name …" When Pieter returned, Jakob would refer to his service medals and decorations, which included the Distinguished Service Order, as "foreign trash.". PLAY. Novels for Students. He admires Pieter greatly until Pieter falls from grace after which Vorster completely turns on him. We learn little of her in the novel beyond Sophie's estimate that "if ever a woman was all love, it was she…." Depicted as a divided personality from childhood, he suffers an internal struggle between what he knows to be moral and legal, and what he finds himself uncontrollably compelled to do. Watching a group of oxen, he envies them because they are "holy and obedient" animals. As a psychological novel, it is a powerful depiction of the corrosive effect of guilt and the destructive power of a repressed subconscious…. In Too Late the Phalarope, the author's familiarity with the Bible is evident in various passages that draw on biblical language or passages. Evidently this "mad sickness" is a strong, but unwanted, sexual attraction to women outside his marriage. This ritual of denial culminates in prayer to God for the destruction of his son's soul; for Jakob solemnly opened the family Bible and read "the most terrible words that man has ever written" from the Hundred and Ninth Psalm, beginning: "When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin." These contrasting attitudes, pitting what amounts to the acceptance of inexorable fate against the impulse toward forgiveness and restoration, bear significantly on the status of Too Late the Phalarope as a tragedy in the literary sense. In chapter 21, Sophie writes that he "thought only of the note, the note, with the three small words and the seven letters that could destroy a man." He had impregnated one of his black servants, and knew that it would be obvious that he was the father. There is hope that his determination to avoid bringing destruction on them will strengthen him against the desire for Stephanie. Source: Edward Callan, "The Pride of Pure Race: Too Late the Phalarope," in Alan Paton, Twayne, 1999. He leaves the town, however, after Martha breaks their engagement. This appears to be one of Paton's main motives in creating her. But the blow does not fall on Pieter immediately, and for a time he feels assured that his prayers to avoid discovery have been answered. Moss, Rose, "Alan Paton: Bringing a Sense of the Sacred," in World Literature Today, Vol. Its account of "Modern Industry and Tribal Life" with a subsection on "Crime and Disintegration" gives, in small space, the social record dramatized in Cry, the Beloved Country. Without Pieter's diary, there is no novel. Martha is Pieter's youngest sister. He was a Dutch-speaking Boer whose family originally arrived in South Africa in 1692 as farmers. Pieter hopes that, by praying and making promises, his imagined (at this point) enemies will also disappear. Too Late the Phalarope offers a devastating look into human brokenness, confession, and ultimately a failure of redemption. She is a loving mother and a dutiful wife although she and her husband are sexually incompatible. His wife and his sister, Tante Sophie, adhere to Louis Botha's ideal discussed in Chapter 1, above; his son Pieter, in the finer aspects of his character, might be said to personify Botha's ideal. She is the middle sister and is married to a man from Johannesburg. Her concern for these men, and indeed for all men, is deeply Christian; her Christianity, based on love, contrasts strikingly with Jakob's narrower, puritanical Christianity that respects obedience above all. Despite Pieter's position in law enforcement, the external morality imposed by the law is inadequate to prevent him from breaking the very law he is sworn to uphold and enforce. Not really wicked, Anna is flashy, bored by the small town, and slightly vulgar. Too Late the Phalarope: An Online Discussion. ." He seems less concerned with the moral weight of his decision to break the law than he does with the legal consequences of doing so. His friend Kappie, the Jewish storekeeper, suffers mutely with him, but acts with courage to dissuade him from suicide. Pieter has grown up and was a decorated soldier in the war, after which he was given a high-ranking position with the police. Sophie's final summing up suggests this when she says that Pieter's story would be better told by her sister: "And I wish she could have written it, for maybe of the power of her love that never sought itself, men would have turned to the holy task of pardon, that the body of the Lord might not be wounded twice, and virtue come of our offences.". religious. He conspires with Stephanie to trap Pieter into sleeping with Stephanie a third time so that evidence can be collected, including a shoe print and a seashell placed in Pieter's pocket by Stephanie. At the time of publication, reviewers were already recognizing it as superior to its predecessor. The only man of higher authority than Pieter, the captain is a respectable and wise man who thinks highly of Pieter. She reacts strongly; this threat pierces her veil of nonchalance. Baker suggested that Paton uses Sophie as a narrator to avoid dealing with the black-white sexual relationship head-on. Paton changed the dynamics in the school from force and conflict to trust and respect. Literature written during this time often focuses on social issues, attempting to raise the consciousness of readers and introduce them to new realities. One may find interesting corroboration of this attitude in textbooks widely used in Transvaal schools. Pieter's endurance of terror brings a full recognition that the consequences of his act, if discovered, will involve not only himself but Nella and his children and all who bore the name van Vlaanderen. 92-98. Stephanie stops by Pieter's house to tell him that she has gotten legitimate work, and Sophie notices a look pass between them. In her, Paton has created his only really well-defined woman; this portrait is a work of technical mastery and avoids a potential sore spot.". Instead, Pieter talks to him and allows him to go free. As a result, Pieter's "black mood" returns, and he seeks Stephanie out and has sex with her a second time. The reader, in fact, accepts them as the inevitable expression of his character. Vorster is a young man who works in the police station. He arranged to show Pieter the phalarope, the little wading bird about whose habits the author of the book was mistaken; and, although perplexed by the whole thing, he even purchased some expensive stamps for him. Another source of Pieter's psychological conflict is the tension between him and his wife Nella, arising from her attitude to married love. Many critics claim that his sudden death at the end of the story is the result of his shame and hurt over his son's act. Sophie chooses to see her nephew, even though she will no longer be allowed in her brother's house. The tragedy of misunderstood words resurfaces when Sophie laments in chapter 31 that she did not act when she could have to save her nephew. In his Books with Men behind Them, author Edmund Fuller refers to Sergeant Steyn as a Judas figure, who betrays Pieter and then disappears from the story. John Barkham, the noted reviewer, says, "Too Late the Phalarope is that rare and splendid thing: a second novel which is the equal of its unforgettable predecessor." Once again filled with guilt, Pieter feels profoundly ashamed of himself. For this law is the greatest and holiest of laws, and if you break it and are discovered, for you it is nothing but another breaking of the law. The non-fictional model for this fictional book was The Birds of South Africa—a comprehensive work with fine color illustrations like the Audubon series in the United States, published in South Africa in 1948. Since Paton does not reveal the author's name, readers are left to assume that old Jakob's repugnance is a measure of his hostility to Englishmen in general. I argue that Paton indicts Afrikaner Christian nationalism by dramatising a paradox inherent in it. Further, he regarded her as ineffective, commenting, "Paton brings Sophie a long way into reality, but he cannot make her narrative mechanics natural." He only meant to tease his friend, and as soon as Pieter realizes that nobody saw his crime, his entire reality changes. The judge warns her that if she does not find legal work, she may lose her child. These fundamental ideals are summed up in the novel by the Afrikaner patriarch, old Jakob van Vlaanderen, when he rebukes the besotted Flip van Vuuren who persisted in demanding, "what's the point of living, what's the point of life? The two complementary actions of the plot imply an ironic contrast; namely, that even though Pieter's adultery transgresses the laws of God, it is not God, but an idol—the false deity of Pure Race—that exacts the terrible retribution of Pieter's destruction, and the destruction of all belonging to him. If Nella's part in Pieter's susceptibility to temptation is remote, the part played by Anna is immediate and physical. At the end of chapter 6, for example, Sophie describes Nella as sweet and innocent, adding, "Then the hard hand of Fate struck her across the face, and shocked her into knowledge, but only after we had been destroyed." 152-59. In contrast, other critics have commended Paton's stylistic ability in the novel, with special praise for the character of Sophie. 3, No. The events he interpreted as signs that his transgression had been discovered turn out to be mere coincidence or the shallow practical jokes of the welfare worker, Japie Grobler. In the chapter "Race Relations: White and non-White" in one junior high school textbook in social studies, there is a subheading "The Sin of Race Mixture" which argues that God wills separate races. It is this pride in Pure Race, set up as an ideal, that the narrator, Tante Sophie, has in mind in her summing up: "I pray we shall not walk arrogant, remembering Herod whom an Angel of the Lord struck down, for that he made himself a God." Henrietta is the eldest of Pieter's three sisters. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. This is the beginning of Paton's intriguing autobiography that describes the author's upbringing and political activism in his native South Africa. She readily admits it when there is something she does not understand, as in chapter 4 when she tells about the stamps that Kappie shows Pieter. Also an avid rugby player, he is thrilled to meet Pieter, whose reputation as an athlete is well-known. She adds that his struggle is intensified because he cannot control his attraction to that which repels (or should repel) him. Sophie hopes that her writing will not only change her feelings about her painful experience, but that it will also change people's minds about what kind of man her nephew is. Steyn is something of an Iago, but his hatred is not motiveless. eNotes - Too Late the Phalarope Detailed study guides typically feature a comprehensive analysis of the work, including an introduction, plot summary, character analysis, discussion of themes, excerpts of published criticism, and Q&A. She is often arrested and seems unaffected by serving jail time. She is distraught at the thought of losing her child, and when she runs into him in the street, she explains that she needs a lawyer but has no money. Much later, after having sex with Stephanie the third time, Pieter bathes while. Here is reaffirmation of the worth and dignity of man, a book the reading of which is a terrific but exalting experience. First, she includes excerpts from Pieter's diary to support what she is saying. 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