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.
Symbols & Motifs
The African Farm
The setting—the farm and the African landscape that surrounds it—serves as the foundation of the characters’ development. The farm symbolizes the extremity of their isolation, far from metropolitan centers of power. This contributes to Tant’ Sannie’s dependence on conventional mores, which connect her to the traditions of her homeland, and to Otto’s reliance on scripture for guidance. There are no other authorities to whom they can turn. This isolation is emphasized upon the arrival of Bonaparte Blenkins—someone from the wider world whose stories Tant’ Sannie and Otto take on faith—and later that of Gregory Rose. Gregory notes “the dreary monotony of the landscape” while he peruses the “Illustrated London News” (174). In contrast to Waldo, who is of the farm, Gregory sees nothing of interest in the natural landscape; it is merely something to exploit for profit. He does not belong there; he is a city dweller stuck in a colonial outpost.
For Waldo, though, the natural world inspires epiphanies about the nature of existence and humankind’s place in the universe. The landscape and animals alike serve as a motif that develops the theme of Finding God and Unity in Nature. They suggest and provide order within the seeming chaos of life—the passing of the seasons, for example, forming the backdrop of farm work. The novel itself respects the natural world to the point of personification, implying the intrinsic oneness that Waldo sees between people and the land. During the drought, “the earth crie[s] for water” as “the sun look[s] down” upon “the milk-bushes, like old hags, [who] point[] their shrivelled fingers heavenwards, praying for the rain that never [comes]” (44). Likewise, when humans are compared to animals, it is considered a compliment: Otto calls the young girls his “chickens,” and Waldo’s pigs are the embodiment of “all beauty.” When Waldo has his revelation about the interconnectedness of life, it comes after watching ants, spiders, beetles, and flies: “Every day the karroo shows us a new wonder sleeping in its teeming bosom” (152). Thus, people, animals, and even kopjes are equally significant to the universal harmony.
Lambs and Sheep
Lambs and sheep are employed as metaphors throughout the novel, which takes place on a sheep farm. The setting is realistic—there were many farms of this kind in colonial Africa—but it also functions symbolically. Sheep are among the most prominent symbols of innocence in Christian tradition, and the novel—in keeping with its skepticism of organized religion—frequently adapts and subverts this association. The characters who live on the sheep farm are themselves like sheep in their innocence, but that innocence often shades into naïveté that makes the characters more handily herded into pens. Without an adequate education and with only limited worldly experience, innocence can easily be exploited. Moreover, it is not necessarily synonymous with happiness. The suffering that both Waldo and Lyndall experience as children—Waldo with his crisis of faith and Lyndall with her stubborn desire for education—reveals itself in “intense loneliness […] [and] intense ignorance” (43). Childhood in the novel is a time of emotional pain and abandonment: an innocence that is not about purity but rather stained with the darkness of ignorance. The sheep and the innocence they represent are also associated with mindlessness—the herd moving as one. When Waldo sings hymns in tribute to God, “The sheep with their senseless eyes turn[] to look at him” (68). They do not understand the true nature of God or existence any more than Waldo does at the time, but unlike Waldo, they have no interest in learning.
In their connotation of sacrifice, the sheep also play with Christian symbolism. Waldo makes an offering of his lunchtime mutton, a literal serving of a sacrificial lamb, which God does not accept. This foreshadows both his and Lyndall’s fates, as they are sacrificed for their ideals to no apparent purpose. Waldo’s very job is to care for the sheep on the farm, but unlike Jesus, the shepherd of Christian tradition, he fails in caring for his flock, which includes Lyndall. Otto goes in search of the “lost sheep” who disappeared from the farm, foreshadowing the younger generation’s future. Em will have her goodness and trust betrayed; Waldo will wander, returning home to loss; and Lyndall will become a martyr—to what cause is unclear.
Light and Dark
The author employs a motif of night and day to develop themes related to faith and education, with the contrast of light against shadow symbolizing the movement from innocence to experience and from ignorance to knowledge. The farm itself changes as the night turns into day: “The farm by daylight was not the farm by moonlight” (38). Moonlight in particular amplifies everything for the better. The girls are made more beautiful by moonlight, as the harsh light of day reveals their minor flaws. Moonlight is also bound up in Lyndall’s longing for her childhood: “And were there not yet better times than these? Moonlight nights, when they romped about the door, with the old man, yet more a child than any of them” (54). Otto brings levity and lightness to the girls’ young lives, just as the moonlight tempers the night.
In its association with nostalgia and idealism, moonlight thus evokes the innocence of childhood, even though the characters’ actual childhoods were never so idyllic. In darkness, fear dominates—Tant’ Sannie has nightmares of choking, while Waldo weeps over lost souls—while daylight reveals truths that one might prefer not to recognize. Yet the movement into daylight is not wholly negative; it also reverberates with the novel’s religious and existential concerns, with the brightness of meaning peeking through the gloomy doubt. The congregants listening to the sermon on Sunday morning do not always clearly glean its meaning: “There hung over it that inscrutable charm which hovers for ever for the human intellect over the incomprehensible and shadowy” (73). From the moonlight of the farm to the shadows of the sermon, the novel moves toward an understanding, as imperfect as it might be, of Waldo’s various experiments with belief that lead him to an overarching theory, Lyndall’s disappointing education but instructive experiences, and Em’s betrayal by and ultimate betrothal to Gregory. In the end, Waldo walks out into the bright light of day, thinking “that life [is] a rare and very rich thing” (299). The novel that begins in darkness, fear, and ignorance ends in the bright light of day, with Waldo emerging from the darkness to witness the sun that represents goodness and truth.
