27 pages • 54 minutes read
Bessie HeadThe Prisoner Who Wore Glasses
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Glasses
Brille’s glasses symbolize his perceptiveness, especially regarding Hannetjie’s behavior and discrimination. Although Hannetjie pinpoints Brille’s shortsightedness as a weakness, Head uses Brille’s glasses to signify special insight that sets him apart from the rest of Span One.
Head focuses on Brille’s glasses at key points in the story. When Hannetjie beats Brille, Span One is shocked by how Brille anticipates the blows and removes his glasses so that they will not be “smashed to pieces on the ground” (Paragraph 19). Brille’s removal of his glasses signifies his ability to perceive and anticipate Hannetjie’s actions, and it reveals how important the preservation of Brille’s perceptiveness is to him. The symbol of Brille’s glasses also furthers the theme of The Duality of Indoctrination and Dehumanization because Brille’s caution around preserving his glasses shows how he wants to preserve his dignity and humanity. Brille may be imprisoned and degraded, but he is desperate to hold onto anything that preserves his individuality, such as his glasses.
Nature
The motif of nature is connected to Brille and his fanciful personality, highlighted by the contrasting imagery of the enclosed prison yard with the sweeping sky. The detailed descriptions of the clouds in the sky and the cabbage field elicit a sense of peace and freedom that is absent from the rest of the story.
The clouds represent Brille’s imaginative nature: He projects his own guilt and regret when he notices the clouds are headed in the direction of his home, and he wonders if this is a sign that he should send a message to his children. However, despite the enjoyment that Brille receives from staring at the sky and wondering about his family, the motif of nature also appears later in the description of Hannetjie’s eyes, which are “the color of the sky but they [are] frightening” (Paragraph 5). Hannetjie’s eyes being likened to the sky, which had previously been a source of comfort for Brille, represents the powerlessness Brille feels when faced with the unpredictability of Hannetjie.
Brille’s Name
“Brille” is the Afrikaans word for a person who wears glasses. Although “Brille” is the only name given for the protagonist, Head reveals that this is a nickname, one that he was given while in prison. Head does not disclose if the name was given to him by warders or by Span One, but since it is an Afrikaans word that describes his outward appearance, and since Span One only ever refers to him as “brother,” it is more likely that a warder gave him the name. Brille’s name symbolizes the active dehumanization occurring in the story as well as the ways in which the Dutch South Africans want to strip Black South Africans of their individuality. Since the nickname is in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch colonizers, Brille’s name further symbolizes the discrimination of apartheid that pervades every sector of Span One’s life; the Dutch South Africans strip him of his identity by replacing his name with something outside of his choosing.
Related Titles
By Bessie Head
