51 pages • 1 hour read
Olive SchreinerThe Story of an African Farm
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1883A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Shadows From Childlife”
Content Warning: This section discusses racist stereotypes, with outdated and offensive language used to describe indigenous peoples replicated only in explanations or direct quotations. This section also discusses death and infant death and refers to suicide.
It is nighttime, and the moon looms large over a farm in Africa. Tant’ (Aunt) Sannie, a Boer woman, sleeps amid nightmares. Two young girls rest in the next room; one (later revealed to be Lyndall) is briefly awake and calls to her companion, Em. The other girl is asleep, so she rolls over to slumber again.
In an outbuilding, the farm’s overseer, an older German man, sleeps peacefully while his son lies awake. The son is tormented by thoughts of mortality. Each tick of the clock sounds to him like the words “dying, dying, dying!” (37). He worries about the souls of those who die, and he wishes to save them all.
The next morning, the farm is alive with activity. Tant’ Sannie drinks coffee while the two girls—Em is Tant’ Sannie’s stepdaughter, and Lyndall is Em’s cousin—sew. The German overseer is preaching to two African boys while his son, Waldo Farber, herds the sheep. At lunchtime, Waldo sacrifices his lambchop on a makeshift altar. When it is not accepted, Waldo believes that God must despise him, like Cain. Em and Lyndall catch him crying.
Two years later, Waldo mourns his lost connection to God. He still believes in Jesus Christ, but he thinks that he has been forsaken by God and feels alone.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Plans and Bushman-Paintings”
There is an ongoing drought during the year 1862. Lyndall and Em talk about the future, sitting beneath an outcropping of rock carved with ancient paintings. They are only 12, but Lyndall already has clear ideas about her future: She wants to go away to school, though Em finds the thought distressing. Waldo, now 14, brings some grass blades—rare in the drought—to Lyndall.
He tells the girls that a stranger, Bonaparte Blenkins, has come to the farm. Lyndall muses about the famous Napoleon Bonaparte. The children speculate about the value of book learning, and Waldo wonders how much the hills and trees could tell them about the past. The indigenous peoples who painted on the rocks would probably have wisdom for them as well, he suggests, though they are all gone now. The children decide to go meet the stranger.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “I Was a Stranger, and Ye Took Me in”
Tant’ Sannie protests the suggestion that the stranger stay at her farm: She is a widow, and it would not be proper. Through a servant translator—Sannie does not speak English, only Dutch—Bonaparte Blenkins assures her that his intentions are honorable and that he himself has a wife. She reluctantly allows him to stay in the outbuilding with the German overseer, Otto.
Lyndall brings supper to the outbuilding, remembering all of the kindness that “Uncle Otto” has shown to her and Em. While Tant’ Sannie provides for them, she does not indulge their happiness like Otto. When Lyndall comes in, she notices that the stranger is asleep and asks some questions about him. Otto says that the man’s horse died and that he has been walking since that morning. Lyndall notices the man’s shabby boots—they have done more walking than one day—and suggests that he is lying. Otto will have none of this; he feels sorry for the man. Lyndall leaves, and Otto takes up his worn copy of the Bible. He reads a passage about the goodness of welcoming strangers.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Blessed Is He That Believeth”
Bonaparte Blenkins tells a number of stories about himself. He claims that he is named for his kinsman, Napoleon, and is also related to the Duke of Wellington; he says that he speaks many languages, though not German or Dutch. He claims that his fortune was lost at sea and that the Duke of Wellington’s nephew—whose life he once saved—would do nothing to help him. When Lyndall questions the veracity of Bonaparte’s tales, Otto defends him.
Otto ends up giving Bonaparte his best hat and a good amount of brandy. However, when Bonaparte suggests that he preach at the makeshift service they hold on Sundays at the farm, Otto hesitates; this is his most beloved contribution. Still, he offers the honor to Bonaparte, giving the man his own best suit.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Sunday Service”
Waldo suffers through his own private service, worrying about the inconsistencies he finds in the Bible. He then remembers that God knows everything and that even when he doubts, God still loves him. He longs for death so that he can be reunited with God.
At the farm gathering, Bonaparte offers a rousing sermon on lying and its consequences: Liars will be condemned to a fiery hell. Tant’ Sannie thinks that he looks very respectable in his black suit. Bonaparte tells of looking into the volcano at Etna and compares that to the lake of fire in which sinners burn.
Back at the farm, Tant’ Sannie invites Bonaparte inside. He compliments an old picture of her. They eat with Otto, and after supper, Otto asks Bonaparte if he would take a job teaching the two girls. Bonaparte agrees, noting that the salary is unimportant.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Bonaparte Blenkins Makes His Nest”
Waldo happens upon Em, who is crying. She tells him that Lyndall has angered Bonaparte, their new tutor, by disagreeing with him. When Em tells Waldo about the lessons, it is clear that Bonaparte is inventing his teachings—telling them that Copernicus was an emperor of Rome, for example. Lyndall knows that his lessons are foolish. Waldo tries to distract Em by telling her about the machine he is making: an invention to shear sheep.
Meanwhile, Otto is called up to the main house. Bonaparte is in a terrible state; he has received news that his wife is dead. He claims that he should never be happy again without a wife. Otto and Tant’ Sannie give him brandy to calm him down and leave him to rest. When they are out of earshot, he laughs to himself, planning to swindle Tant’ Sannie into marrying him.
Part 1, Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The opening description of various characters struggling to sleep establishes the uneasy atmosphere against which the effects of Bonaparte’s arrival, the divisions between the farm’s inhabitants, and Waldo’s growing crisis of faith will play out. Waldo lies awake because he is tormented by the idea that so many people are condemned to die without salvation; his religious education has centered on fear. He exclaims, “Only some; only a few! Only for each moment I am praying here one! […] God! God! save them!” (37). He feels responsible for the many who are not granted absolution. Later, he offers his lunch in sacrifice to God and becomes distraught when he believes that it is not accepted—though, shortly after that, he remembers that God loves him even when he doubts. That his belief wavers between religious ecstasy and a crippling fear of consequences implies Waldo’s need for some sort of balance, laying the groundwork for the novel’s exploration of Finding God and Unity in Nature.
The characters’ sleeplessness also foreshadows Bonaparte’s arrival at the farm, which disrupts their daily routines. It does so in part by driving a wedge between Lyndall, with her intuitions of Bonaparte’s unsavory intentions, and everyone else: Em cries at Lyndall’s stubbornness, Otto gullibly believes the man’s extraordinary tall tales, and Tant’ Sannie gets drawn into his schemes via flattery. When the servant translator suggests that Tant’ Sannie does not like the English, Bonaparte says that he is Irish. When Tant’ Sannie rails against the impropriety of having a strange man at her farm, he claims that he is married. When Tant’ Sannie identifies herself in an old picture, Bonaparte says that she is beautiful. He cons her at every turn, but she is ultimately convinced of his appropriate intentions when she sees him in Otto’s black suit: He looks “so holy and respectable” in the “new, shining black cloth” (69). Appearances—of propriety and flattery—mean much more than to Tant’ Sannie than substance.
Bonaparte’s appearance also disrupts Waldo’s status quo, catalyzing even deeper spiritual anguish. Bonaparte’s sermon is a particularly marked departure from Waldo’s spiritual searching. While Waldo investigates deep and abiding questions about faith and salvation, acknowledging his own doubt, Bonaparte hypocritically sermonizes on the fiery depths of Hell reserved for liars. Bonaparte himself is one of those liars, as Lyndall well knows: “I think he is a liar” (56), she tells Otto. However, Otto refuses to believe her, his very gullibility undermining the wisdom of what he so fervently believes, as when “[i]t appear[s] to the German that Christ [is] very near him” (57). Conflating Bonaparte with the weary stranger from the Bible reveals an ignorance born of indoctrination and calls into question the currency of belief itself.
This reverberates with Lyndall’s desire to go to school and with the children’s discussion about the basis of knowledge, both of which establish the theme of The Value of Education. Lyndall innocently believes that education is the highest attainment: “There is nothing helps in this world […] but to be very wise, and to know everything—to be clever” (45). Em, for her part, finds the idea frightening; she does not want to leave what she knows. Waldo offers a third perspective, finding the idea of education intriguing but seeking it in more unorthodox places, such as nature: “It they could talk, if they could tell us now! […] then we would know something” (48). He here refers to the hills, lakes, stones, and other features of the surrounding landscape; within nature, he believes, one can find wisdom, or at least a deeper knowledge of how things came to be. Unusually for a European in colonial Africa, he even believes that they could learn something from the “Bushman-paintings” of the chapter’s title, though he also notes that the people who created the paintings have since been wiped out by the Boers. This is the first indication that colonialism, and its inherent violence, pervades life on an African farm run by Boers (Dutch settlers) and Germans. It also implicitly critiques how that violence has erased traditional sources of knowledge; the children cannot learn anything from the indigenous past.
The African farm itself, like the scenery that surrounds it, reveals the outsized impact of the setting on the characters—especially the developing consciousness of the children. The opening lines describe the night’s particular quality in this specific land: “The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain” (35). The tone is plaintive, and the setting establishes the mood. The inhabitants of this farm are far from metropolitan centers; they are isolated (and foreign) in this world. This very isolation fuels not only their existential inquiries but also their relative innocence. It explains, at least partially, how a confidence man such as Bonaparte can insinuate himself so quickly into their lives.
