Talking about a Book that became a Movie Classic
Maybe you have a similar enjoyment, do tell.
My review: Out of Africa
Author: Isak Dineson
Type of work · Memoir
Genre · Colonial travel literature
Language · English
Time and place written · Denmark, 1935–1936
Date of first publication · 1837
Narrator · Baroness Karen Blixen
POV · First Person
Tone · usually light and storytelling until the final section when it turns melancholic
Tense · Past tense
Period in time · 1913–1930
Place · Near Nairobi, Kenya, Africa
Protagonist · Baroness Karen Blixen
Major conflict · the narrator’s struggle to keep her coffee farm
Rising action · Attempts to grow coffee; Arrival of Old Knudsen; Hunting expeditions in Africa; Accidental shooting between boys; Visitors on the Farm
Climax · the realization that the narrator must sell her farm
Falling action · Selling of farm; Death of Denys Finch-Hatton; Death of Chief Kinanjui; Departure from Africa
Themes · Aristocracy, Africa as Paradise; Separation of the races
Symbols · Lions; Old Knudsen; Lulu
Foreshadowing · Statement that the farm was too high to grow coffee; seeing a herd of wild dogs; account of the giraffe being shipped to Europe.
Isak Dinesen was the pseudonym used by the Danish author Karen Dinesen Blixen-Finecke (1885–1962). My introduction to this author’s work came first through the movie. The opening line of the movie is the same line that opens the first chapter of the book ‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ingong Hills.’
This sentence, in my opinion, is one of the most remarkable gateway sentences into any story I’ve ever read. I (first-person) had (past-tense) farm (place) Africa (Continent) Foot (Not below, not under, not in the shadow of) Ingong Hills. (Where) Can anyone guide me to be more complete opening gateway into a story?
Backstory:
Out of Africa tells the story of a farm that the narrator once had in Africa. The farm is located at the foot of the Ngong hills outside of Nairobi, in what is now Kenya.
The farm, she explains, sits at an altitude of six thousand feet. The farm grows coffee, although only part of its six thousand acres is used for agriculture. The remaining parts of the land are forest and space for the natives to live on. The first initiates the reader into the setting using color, and showing the vibrancy and life of Africa. In the first chapter we learn about the Kikuyu tribe. In exchange for living on the farm, they labor on it a certain number of days per year. There are many other tribal Africans nearby. The Swahilis live in Nairobi and down the coast. The Masai live on a large Reserve just south of the farm. Many Somalis live in the area as well, including Farah, the chief servant who helps the narrator run the entire farm. Farah is to figure prominently in the entire story.
The Somali were cattle-dealers and traders all over the country. For the transport of their goods they kept a number of little grey donkeys in the village, and I have seen camels there as well: haughty, hardened products of the desert, beyond all earthly sufferings, like Cactus, and like the Somali.
Character Development:
The narrator herself is a Danish woman. She never gives her name while telling her story, although it is mentioned in subtle ways as “Baroness Blixen” and once as “Tania.”
We follow the narrator through her day, actively involved with the natives on her farm. It seems to me on every page we hear about her personal development, her learning process becomes our learning process. She runs an evening school for both children and adults. She gives medical care to anyone who needs it every morning. Once she treats a young Kikuyu boy Kamante, who has open sores running up and down his legs. When she cannot heal him, she sends him to a nearby hospital runs by Scotch Protestants.
Scenes:
For the majority of Out of Africa, the narrator remembers different incidents that took place on the farm, although these events are not described in chronological order. One time there is an accidental shooting in which one native boy shot two others, killing one and seriously injuring the other. Eventually, the elders of the Kikuyu tribe determine that the father of the boy who shot the gun must pay the other families for what they suffered. After numerous debates and the involvement of the Kikuyu Chief, Kinanjui, a certain quantity of livestock is settled upon.
As the narrator weaves through her memories of Africa, she shapes a landscape that resembles a type of paradise. On her own farm, she lives in unity with the natives and even some of the animals. At one point, a domesticated deer, Lulu, comes to live with them, which symbolizes the connection of the farm to its landscape. The narrator in general proposes that Africa is superior to Europe because it exists in a purer form, without the modernizing influence of culture. As such it is closer to what God initially intended, when he created man, it appears like a true paradise.
Having seen the movie and read the book, I found the movie entertaining, the book informative and far greater detail. The movie, quite naturally, moves one’s emotions, avoiding many a hard truth learned in the book.
Do you have a book that became a movie you’d like to share. No, you do not have to do what I’ve done here but share in responses what the book is and what you enjoyed most, book or movie.
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Thanks for reading.
