This appears to be one of Paton's main motives in creating her. He changes his will, removing Pieter and adding Nella and the children on the condition that they never have anything more to do with Pieter. Pieter was conscious of his problem, and could have sought help. This second novel continues to be overshadowed by its predecessor, despite considerable critical opinion that it is the more polished of the two. Esther is reportedly the oldest woman in the villagemore than a hundred years oldand claims to remember when the Boers first came to the area although Sophie doubts this. The crime is found out, however, and Smith is tried and sentenced to hang. The first gradually unfolds the events leading to Pieter van Vlaanderen's temptation and sin; the second reveals him enmeshed in a web of tragedy and destruction. Sophie is the narrator of the story. From this point on, Paton's literary concern is not with Pieter's guilt, but with his terror of discovery. Consequently, she is in a position to tell the reader about events and conversations that happened outside her personal experience. Anna is a modern woman who smokes and wears "yellow trousers" that Sophie detests. She is married to a quiet man who is afraid of Jakob. 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. Sheepishly, Steyn returns, explaining that he made a mistake and read the date wrong. 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." Even before apartheid, there were laws governing the social interactions of blacks and whites. Therefore, in Too Late the Phalarope, as in Cry, the Beloved Country, the theme of restoration centers around the acceptance of personal responsibility by those who, while detesting the sin, continue to love the sinner and forgive him. 1, 1981, pp. Pieter regularly attends church and is a well-known rugby player who is admired by many. Critical Overview Great is the pain for blood-relatives and friends if anyone sins against this highest law; greater still is the scandal when a people sins against its own blood.". Sophie frequently refers to Pieter's divided self. He was an upright man, just in accordance with his own unwavering principles. Watts, Nicholas H. Z., "A Study of Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope," in Durham University Journal, Vol. He is the chairman of his political party although he rarely appears for meetings, feeling that the members of the party are his "oxen." flag. The captain's distant mood makes Pieter wonder if he has heard of the crime. Plot Summary 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. Hooper reviews the story of Too Late the Phalarope with special attention to the causes, purposes, and outcomes of Stephanie's silence. Neither is the phalarope a symbol. As a result of her lifestyle, she is well-known by the police, who have arrested her often. While some scholars find the novel lacking in universality, others counter that universal themes are the book's strength. Paton undercuts the dilemma by building his tragedy, not on the consequences of Pieter van Vlaanderen's act understood as a sin against God (he leaves this as an inner, private matter), but on the consequences of his act understood as a "sin against the race.". Overwhelmed by guilt and terror, he becomes paranoid. Chapters 1 through 19 may be said, therefore, to comprise The Book of Temptation; Chapters 20 through 39, The Book of Retribution. Pieter's mother's first name is never revealed in the story although her personality is described on several occasions. In so describing Nella, Paton seems to be pointing beyond such commonplace categories as prudery or Puritanism, to the classic Christian heresies of the Manicheans and the Gnostics. It gives a brief historical sketch of the origins and development of South Africa's racial groups, and indicates the current status of each. Why or why not? Smuts distinguished himself as a military leader during the war, and he and General J. H. de la Rey organized resistance against opposing forces in western Transvaal (one of the two Afrikaner republics). Novels for Students. ." Without Pieter's diary, there is no novel. Esther is the elderly woman with whom Stephanie and her child live. The hero ultimately grasps what has happened and understands his responsibility for the outcome. 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? Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. She is a loving mother and a dutiful wife although she and her husband are sexually incompatible. As has already been remarked, Too Late the Phalarope resembles Cry, the Beloved Country in certain aspects of its artistic method. Upon his return to South Africa, Paton went to live on the south coast of Natal, where he wrote articles about issues pertinent to South Africa. This is the second part of Paton's autobiography, completed just before his death in 1988. Evidently this "mad sickness" is a strong, but unwanted, sexual attraction to women outside his marriage. One ground is that the Christian conception of free will cannot admit of determined, inescapable fate. Japie is a childhood friend of Pieter's who grows up and becomes a social worker. This is due in part to its literary method, which resembles the method of Greek tragedy more closely than does that of the earlier novel, but it also may be due to the changes that meanwhile took place in South Africa's political climate. South African Nobel Prize-winning author Gordimer discusses the voice in Too Late the Phalarope as it compares to the voice in Paton's later novel, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. Stevens, Irma Ned, "Paton's Narrator Sophie: Justice and Mercy," in International Review, Vol. 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. The next day, he is called into the captain's office. But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences." When Pieter considers telling someone about his strong attraction to Stephanie, he chooses Kappie as his potential confidant because he knows that instead of being judgmental, Kappie will be sympathetic and supportive. The story takes place in Venterspan in SouthAfrica and is told by Sophie, the aunt of Pieter van Vlaanderenwho isthe main character. Too Late the Phalarope Quotes Showing 1-5 of 5 “But perhaps when you were too obedient, and did not do openly what others did, and were quiet in church and hard-working at school, then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.” In Too Late the Phalarope, he explained, the author creates a relatively simple story featuring a virtuous protagonist whose tragic flaw destroys his life. Various characters in Too Late the Phalarope embody contrasting attitudes to this sin against the highest law. Chapter 26 contains a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 3:1-5; Sophie remarks. 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. 32, No. 37-44. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Too Late The Phalarope. Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. 83-101. 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. Because Pieter is given the high-ranking position of lieutenant in the police force, Sergeant Steyn is resentful at being made subordinate to a man who is younger than he is. 2, June 1984, pp. Sophie describes it as the last time they were all truly happy before they were destroyed. Chief among his opponents were members of the National Party. This is a symbolic act meant to remove Pieter and his shameful ways from the family. Pieter's sister, Martha, blushes as she looks at the new minister, as do all the young unmarried women. The characters representing the forces of arrogant pride in race treat the transgressor with supreme contempt. It is an actual bird about whose habits old Jakob, in fact, knew more than "the Englishman" who wrote the book. While it may be argued that Steyn was already so close to committing himself to Pieter's ruin that any similar incident would have achieved the same outcome, Paton chose to set Pieter's fate in motion because of a few misunderstood words. Because she tells the story in past tense, she often foreshadows events to come. The young minister visits, asking Pieter if he thinks Jakob will allow him to marry Martha. And in the general elections of that year, Dr. Malan's Nationalist Party received an unexpectedly large plurality for its policy of apartheid. Kappie is a good friend of Pieter's, with whom he shares an interest in stamp collecting. This thaw in the iciness of his attitude toward his son adds great poignancy to the novel by suggesting what might have been; but it is not the fact that father and son recognized a common interest too late that supplies the essential element of tragedy. He is aware of two conflicting sides to his character: the one, brave and upright; the other possessed by an elemental urge attracting him, he says, to what he most hated. Paton, Alan, Journey Continued: An Autobiography, Scribner, 1988. The opening episodes of this second movement parallel those opening chapters of the first movement that establish the social atmosphere in which transgressing the prohibitions of the Immorality Act constitutes the most terrible thing in the world. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. E. L. Doctorow Please try again. 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. He interprets his coworkers' bad moods as intentional distancing from him, and he imagines that a neighbor's unfriendly behavior is a sign of disgust at Pieter's crime. Not really wicked, Anna is flashy, bored by the small town, and slightly vulgar. She is presented to us as being clearly aware of her own powers of observation. Their discovery of a shared in-terest opens a breach in the wall of hostility between them. 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. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. In Too Late the Phalarope, there is also an underlying belief in the action value of words, meaning that written or spoken words have the power to change people's feelings and opinions (and, by extension, other people's fates). 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. She plants the evidence on Pieter and turns witness against him, and he is convicted and sentenced to prison for contravening the Immorality Act, No. It is he who recognizes that to destroy and not to restore is the greatest of all offenses, and it is his words that make Sophie understand that Pieter's future rests with Nella, the injured wife: "There is a hard law, mejouffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us we never recover until we forgive." In the following essay, Callan examines Too Late the Phalarope by comparing and contrasting it with Paton's first novel, Cry the Beloved Country. His choice of the magnanimous Afrikaner woman Tante Sophie as the narrator proves to be a valuable device in this respect. Paton changed the dynamics in the school from force and conflict to trust and respect. ", Stylistically, Paton's novel is scrutinized both favorably and unfavorably. Introduction Critics generally agree that Too Late the Phalarope, while often overshadowed by Cry, the Beloved Country, is Paton's best work. NATIONALITY: South African This was Act 5 of 1927, under which Lieutenant Pieter van Vlaanderen is charged in the novel Too Late the Phalarope. Another source of Pieter's psychological conflict is the tension between him and his wife Nella, arising from her attitude to married love. This interaction brings about one of his "black" moods that haunts him throughout the story. 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. Critical Overview Author Biography Another is that Christianity can admit only one possible form of tragedy, namely, damnation. Nella's attitude to married love may be, partly, a heritage from the religious Puritanism of her people; but her extreme revulsion at hearing that the boy Dick had attempted to accost the black girl, Stephanie, suggests that her other heritage, the ideal of Pure Race, is inextricably entwined with her religious outlook. In 1935, he became the principal of Diepkloof, a school for delinquent boys. Author Biography Characters Nella leaves with the children to visit her parents for an extended stay. She recognizes that his downfall is not brought about wholly by momentary temptation, but that it is a consequence of accumulated life experience. 3, No. 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. 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