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Is Elias van Rooyen to be despised or pitied? Elias van Rooyen is a strong character in the novel Fields Child. He leads a normal life, making beams for money, but the money he makes is only just enough to live on (pg 3). After Lukas is sent back to live with the van Rooyen's after the court case, and this is where we start to get to know Elias better. But the way he treats Lukas, Nina and his wife, and the way he gets his money, should be both despised and pitied. He is made out to be a bad man at the beginning of the novel, but he does love his family, and we see this towards the end of the novel.
Lukas joining back into the van Rooyen family puts a lot of pressure on Elias and Barta. They want Lukas to feel welcome and to be happy. But Lukas just wants to go back to the Long Kloof. He does not want to talk or do anything Elias says, and Elias started to lose his patience. He shouts commands at Lukas like, Greet your brother and sister, Lukas! (pg 104) twice and Come and sit over here, Lukas! (pg 103). It makes us feel bad because he obviously does not realise exactly what Lukas has just gone through having to leave the family he has grown up with.
We get to see the way he treats Nina too. He cuts her hair as a punishment the man grasped bundles of her hair and cut it as you cut corn with a knife (pg 163). It is really disturbing and makes us think Elias is bad. Or the way he uses the ox reins on both of them, to whip them and to tie them up, he tied him up with the ox rein, (pg 159). Matthew also tells how the children fear the reins, Before the first stroke hit her, she started screaming and kept on screaming while she tired to get away. (pg 162). The fact that what he does upsets the children is the main problem.
But should we pity Elias for what he does to the children? After all, they were misbehaving and not doing what he had said, and so then need to be punished. The way Elias treats Barta is to be despised. I think he still loves her as he says at the beginning of the novel she was still good-looking, he thought to himself as she walked slowly away. (pg 4).
But other than this we get the impression that Elias just thinks of her as a child minder, cook, a maid etc because of the way he shouts at her and orders her around. He acts like he does not love her as he is mean, keep quiet Barta! (pg 139), dont come nagging woman! (pg 140). He treats her like a slave - go and start cooking the meat as I told you! (pg 140), and he also believes that he is more important and that he should deal with everything - Keep out of this Barta! (pg 142). I think the only other thing that makes us both despise him and pity him at the same time is the way he gets his money. At the beginning, he works making beams with Nina and Lukas.
But he realises that the money he is getting just is not enough. So going against the law, and risking his life, he goes into the forest, and with the help of Nina and Lukas they build a pit. He doesnt tell Nina or Lukas what it is for, but one day Nina comes back saying pa is a dirty swine. It was a trap. An elephant trap. I went there.
Theres a dead elephant calf lying in the pit. (pg 203 / 4). One day the forester comes and says there is a job for Nina in the village, working as a servant. She really does not want to go, I wont go! I wont go! (pg 215) but Elias will not listen and hits her because of it. In the end he forces her to go. The fact that he sends her, even though she really do not want to go, makes her seem like a bad father.
What kind of father would send their daughter away nowadays to work as a slave? But the fact that he risks his life, and the law, going into the forest to try and catch an elephant, just to get the money to help the family along, shows that he does care about his family. As we can see, I think Elias van Rooyen is to be both pitted and despised, but I think he should mainly be pitied. We firstly get the impression of him being a mad man as he takes out all his anger on his children. But we can see that he is not that bad as towards the end of the novel, when the children are more grown up, he seems nicer and more relaxed. He does love his family and he is only strict and the beginning, because he needs to be.
He does everything he can so they have enough money to live on, the only way in which he should be despised, is the way he treats Barta.
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Research essay sample on Elias Van Rooyen Love His Family Lukas
