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Out of Africa
by Karen Blixen
Mind map of conventions in Out of Africa
Life writing, Out of Africa & Blixen in Africa in the 1920s
Plot summary Part 1 - 5
Characters
Additional Notes on technique
Conventions of Life Writing in Out of Africa
Analysis of text and language in Out of Africa
When responding to the prescribed texts
Relationships in Out of Africa
Out of Africa - page references
Bibliography
Mind map of conventions in Out of Africa
Life writing, Out of Africa’ & Blixen in Africa in the 1920s
Blixen’s retrospective narrative Out of Africa published in 1937 when the narrator returned to Denmark after the sale of her farm in Kenya is elegiac in style and consists of a mixture of autobiography, biography, memoir and nature writing. The text is a carefully crafted reaffirmation of the power of nature and the wild reflected in her own experiences in Kenya (British East Africa) during the final stages of colonial life, and her accounts of the interactions between the white settlers and the African people. The text’s lyrical style and pastoral perspective was designed to provide contemporary readers with an escape from the bleakness of the Depression and the political tensions of Western Europe that culminated in WW2.
Text
Although influenced by the ethnocentric values of her culture and time, Blixen’s perspective was anti-colonialist because she was concerned with the oppression of native cultures by colonizers. She represents, as equally oppressive, the racist, sexist Colonial values and the threat of encroaching modernity to the natural environment. Paradoxically her context and elitist perspective are reflected in her use of language creating obvious tensions between her ideology of unity and her life, which include her rejection of emerging feminism and concurrent descriptions of Africans on her farm as noble but unpredictable children. This contrasts with representations of herself as being a benefactress of superior intellect and breeding, insightful and refined even to the extent of being somewhat self-deprecatingly, the object of worship. Her use of first person pronouns also reveals her pride of possession and the reader must judge her characters by their relationship with her. (Jadwin, p. 1-3)
Blixen’s attention to detail and design reflect her early training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Her use of mythology and replacing the real with the ideal reflects her concerns and Out of Africa does trace her progress from Colonial prejudice and ignorance to acceptance of a greater design through failure and loss.
Style and Structure
Blixen uses contrast to structure her text and express her belief in unity. The pattern of dualities includes contrasts between Africans and Europeans, nature and civilization, dry and monsoon seasons, Christian, pagan and Somali Muslim beliefs.
Nietche’s philosophy informs Blixen’s text and delineation of character as the victim of fate. She judges the new civilization as inferior to the lost old order. Courage and action are antidotes to adversity and knowledge of the past and the symbols of myth enable new nobility. Her ideal new civilization of stoicism and organizing social principle is based on a mutual respect which she sees as existing in primitive and modern cultures such as her farm. (Bruce, M. H. 1995.)
Christian references permeate the text: East Africa is an Eden informed by the nineteenth century view of nature as ennobling and modernity as intrusive precipitating the Fall. Blixen sees herself as Godlike during her flight over the wild with Finch-Hatton and as a writer able to create another Eden with her stories.
The narrative consists of an idyll 
, Blixen’s life in Africa on the six thousand acre farm and a Fall the failure of the farm, its sale and Blixen’s departure for Denmark. However, unlike the structure of a tragedy the fall is not precipitated by the protagonist’s character flaws but by circumstances beyond her control; the failure of the coffee crops, WW1 and the changed political situation in Africa, specifically Kenya.
Myth is counter balanced by fact in episodes and anecdotes of carefully selected and arranged detail. Blixen does not mythologize herself; instead she uses two archetypal wanderers: the blind, derelict Dane, Old Knudson and the Swede Emmanuelson, a former tragic actor fleeing from Nairobi for undisclosed indiscretions. Blixen sees them and the Masai warriors as sharing with her a sense of the symbolic, a nobility and aristocratic view of the world. She and the farm are part of the mythic European past, a rejection of the modern world. Her successful efforts with authorities to find a place for her people together before departing for Denmark belongs to this mythos and her empathy with the Kikuyu stems from a shared moral code. (Langbaum, R. 1964.)
Plot summary Part 1 - 5
Part 1
Kamante and Lulu
The Kenyan landscape and Blixen’s nurturing relationship with Kamante, a sickly Kikuyu boy and Lulu, a gazelle who strays into the compound, are used to represent the possibility of a benign relationship between nature and civilization. Unable to cure Kamante, Blixen sends him to the Church of Scotland Mission, employs him later as her chef and comes to trust him as a friend.
Blixen sees herself as enigmatic and independent like Kamante and Lulu, and anthropomorphizes the gazelle as a princess, placing her within the complex and stylized design elements of elaborate feudal tapestries and design in nature. However, Lulu cannot be controlled, escaping to breed in the wild and return to visit. The episode of Lulu’s return with fawn is one of several epiphanies and Blixen compares Lulu and her fawn to the Empress of China to merge the symbols of god, king and nature. Blixen’s narrative is informed by the pastoral values of feudal Europe in such stylized elements as Lulu’s ‘non human otherness’ as part of an alternative civilization. (Langbaum. p. 136)
Part 2
Blixen’s pastoral vision includes the anecdote of a murder committed on her farm and her role in the trial with the Kyama court of tribal leaders authorized by the Government to arbitrate local murders in the trial. Her inclusion of Kikuyu Chief Kinanjui furthers her thesis of a relationship of mutual respect and harmony between the wild (the Kikuyu) and the colonialists. She contrasts the tribal Kikuyu’s focus on financial retribution to the bereaved father for the death of his son favourably to the colonial focus on attributing blame. Blixen’s representation of harmonious relationships includes symbols such as the anecdote of her nightmare after the shooting: the dead child’s grandmother, a local witch, lays a curse on her farm which her own white magic must combat. Langbaum (p 139) says Blixen satirizes European failure to understand African culture through the uneasy mixture of values implicit in Kinanjui’s incongruous figure refusing to leave his flashy automobile (bought from the American Consul) until Blixen has acknowledged his status.
Part 3 Visitors to the Farm
Blixen’s vision of the noble and aristocratic includes her European visitors and their response to the colonial experience; aristocratic in lineage, Denys Finch–Hatton, Berkley Cole and even the Prince of Wales, or aristocratic in their perspective like Knudsen and Emmanuelson, Blixen presents them as aristocratic in sharing her rejection of the modern world and seeking refuge in the mythic past. They share a love of literature, art, music, fine wine and fine food. ‘Wings’ closes this section with an insight into these values shared by Blixen and Finch-Hatton which in his case led from Oxford to the Ngong Hills where she buried him after the fatal crash of his aircraft. (Langbaum. p. 142)
Part 4 The Immigrants Notebook
Part 4 is a link between the idyll and the reversal that extends the idyll and elaborates on her experiences by contrasting old Africa unfavourably with the new and the sudden reversal in Part 5. Blixen interrupts the narrative with a collection of seemingly miscellaneous anecdotes, fables, reflections and descriptive passages that extend the tapestry of Africa and re-enforces her themes. These stories do not fit into the structure of the narrative, such as the anecdote transporting supplies to the British army in a safari during the war and big game hunting with Finch-Hatton.
Part 5 Farewell to the Farm
The tone and pace of Part 5 contrasts with the rest of the narrative to represent the Fall in the context of her joy which during her idyll dominates first four parts. The intensity of her suffering at the end is reflected in the narrative of disaster after disaster; the failure of the crops, the bankruptcy, the forced sale and the deaths of Chief Kinanjui and Denys Finch-Hatton. Her account of Kinanju’s illness, her refusal to take care of him in her home, his death in hospital and European burial in contravention of tribal custom are represented as failure and a betrayal of trust that she symbolizes by the repeated sound of cocks crowing.
Characters
Isak Dinesan
Isak Dinesan is the non-de-plume of Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke
Blixen assumes the role of the archetypal storyteller and uses her experiences to represent Africa as Utopia. She removes the focus from the details of the narrator’s private life and conceals details of her failed marriage to Baron Blixen and her passionate friendship with Denys Finch-Hatton. Paradoxically, her real empathy for Africa and its people does not preclude clinging to the European myth of ‘the other and nature’. She is ruler, friend and lady of the manor in the European aristocratic tradition and a heroic figure at the centre of her narrative in an African Eden.
Denys Finch–Hatton.
Finch-Hatton was a member of minor British aristocracy, an itinerant big game hunter and Blixen’s closest friend, possibly lover. Blixen characterizes Finch-Hatton as a philosopher king, man of immense intellect and education, a non-conformist like herself who shares a spiritual bond with Africa and empathy with the Africans. Blixen’s account of their friendship centres on a shared love of stories, classical literature and language, Greek and Latin, hunting and the African bush itself. Blixen presents her experience of flying over the Ngong Hills with him as the climax of her life in Africa and his death is an apt conclusion to the idyll. The hero of the narrative, his untimely death in his Gypsy Moth air plane and burial on her property dominates the reversals of Part 5.
Berkley Cole
Berkley Cole was a neighbour and close friend to Blixen and Finch Hatton and a member of the demi-monde in Kenya. His character epitomizes the charm and decadence of the colonial rule: he is a founder of an exclusive club, the Muthaiga Club. Finch-Hatton and Cole supply Blixen with wine and luxuries for her lavish entertainments.
Ingrid Lindstrom
Ingrid was a neighbouring land owner, close friend and confidant. She became a fellow victim of changing times.
Lord Delamere
A leader in WW1 in Mozambique against the Germans and a fellow settler.
Farah Aden
Farah Aden was a Somali manservant from the Haber Yunis tribe, represented as an aristocrat among the African staff and another example of Blixen’s theme of unity. He mediates between Blixen and the Africans, manages her cash and becomes a trusted confidant.
Kamante Gatura
Kamante was a Kikuya boy nurtured in illness by Blixen to become her cook and confidant in adulthood. His function in the text resembles a Greek chorus, providing a wry commentary on her life. He belongs among Blixen’s misfits with whom she shares independent and sceptical attitudes to life.
Chief Kinanju
Chief Kinanju was a leader and friend of Blixen’s. In his characterization, Blixen represent’s the nobility of nature and the taint represented by European values. Accredited by European authorities as the highest ranking among the Kikuyu chiefs, his delineation as a grand figure develops Blixen’s themes of unity between cultures, humanity and nature and his death contributes to the deepening tragedy of Part 5.
Kabero, son of Kinanju
Kabera was a Masai warrior. He extends Blixen’s thesis of the potential nobility of spirit shared by her ‘aristocratic’ misfits.
Esa
Esa, the murdered cook, was used by Blixen to develop her comparison between the passive and oppressed in animals and humanity and her implicit condemnation of the oppressors.
Poorah Singh, Indian blacksmith
Kaninu – Kikuya
A wealthy cattle owner, father of the boy convicted for murdering another child.
Additional Notes on technique
Animal fables
The inclusion of the incident of the young ox belongs to Blixen’s use of animal fables to illustrate her journey to wisdom and provides a structural link to the calm retrospection of Part 5 and to maintain the pastoral style of the text. Blixen uses the story of the death of a young wild buffalo interbred with Masai cattle to illustrate the kinship of the wild. Left overnight with its legs tied together to break its spirit to the yoke, the frantic animal is found dead and the manager remarks ‘We will never come to see him in the yoke now.’ Blixen explains a leopard, itself a creature of the wild, has released it by chewing off its hind leg.
The fable belongs to Blixen’s thesis of kinship between those who share the aristocratic spirit. (Langbaum p. 144) Blixen includes human counterparts for the animals, as in the two widely separated stories of Esa, her cook before Kamante, who is a counterpart of the domesticated oxen. Joyless and broken by servitude his only rebellion is to take a young wife, who then poisons him and flees to Nairobi to live with native soldiers. A lesson is learnt over the passage of time.
Similarly, the animal fable of the Cock and the Chameleon is based on another factual experience and the biblical allusion to Job seeking a sign from God to explain his suffering. Blixen describes how, distraught with the loss of Finch–Hatton, she looks for a sign which takes the form of her fable. She recounts witnessing a Chameleon that confronts a predatory cock on a morning walk, the terrified reptile’s show of force ‘opening his mouth as wide as he possible could, shot out his club shaped tongue’ results in the cock pecking off the tongue and Blixen killing the reptile now fated to a slow death. Blixen interprets this is a sign; she must have the wisdom to rejoice in the world’s sublime beauty and accept its brutality with equanimity. (Langbaum p. 148)
Anecdote
Blixen also develops her themes in the carefully structured anecdote of the trial of a white by colonial justice which contrasts native and colonial cultures. The European court judges and punishes. Blixen’s describes the factual and sensational trial that found the settler ‘Guilty of grievous bodily hurt’ and punished him with a sentence of two years. (Langbaum 145) The cause of death is unexplained except that the victim, Kitosch, willed himself to die as a result of being flogged for insolence. Blixen’s ironic use of the white jury’s perspective of the circumstances include facts of the man disobeying his master by riding a mare he had been sent retrieve instead of walking behind it, enduring a flogging for his passive resistance and finally defending himself by denying being a thief. Blixen suggests that like the wild ox, Kitosch’s natural dignity condemns the ignorance and brutality of his oppressor and contributes to her growing condemnation of the Europeans for depriving native Africans of their land and independence.
Allusions
Like Modjeska and Auster, Blixen uses biblical allusions to add resonance to her themes: she alludes to Genesis 32. 26 in ‘I Will Not Let Thee Go Except Thou Bless Me’ and Jacob’s epiphany when he recognized God’s face in the face of the man he had wrestled represents Blixen’s understanding of the design that governs human lives acquired through her African experiences.
Conventions of Life Writing in Out of Africa
- place & Context – historical, political and cultural
- privileged ideas and perspectives & voice – sense of person
- a concern for ‘truth telling’ and concealment
- mixture of fact and fiction
- allusions to religion, art and literature
- memory & relations– insight into past, present, future
- variety of text types, detailed description of nature
- writing and reflection to understand connections between past, present and future
Analysis of text and language in Out of Africa
In your analysis of Out of Africa make sure to comment on:
- Africa/Kenya and the farm as Utopia the contrast between old values of Europe and the modern socio-cultural paradigms – oppression of African by Colonialist
- aristocracy, nobility of spirit
- unity based on mutual co operation and respect
- the arts, religion and nature as contributing to the aristocratic spirit
- writing and reflection as sources of wisdom and self understanding.
- a variety of text types, stories, allegory, pictures, fables, anecdotes, myth.
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When responding to the prescribed texts
Refer to the Syllabus requirements, Prescription rubric and HSC Markers’ comments. Life Writing over the years has been subject to contextual influences.
Integrate the ‘how’ of the language in your comments on narrative structure, characterisation, setting, mood, themes, pace and tension. HSC Markers regularly remark on the ability of better students to critically consider the concepts and evaluate how the texts represent their concerns. The more sophisticated, informed and fluent responses demonstrate control of their own language, a detailed knowledge of the set texts and their own related material that they integrate and interpret in keeping with the requirements of each question.
The creative writing component of the HSC exam should also reflect an extensive knowledge of the genre, the set texts and independent research as reflected in the student’s original imaginative response to the question. Prepared answers rarely have the sophistication or relevancy required for Extension 1.
Student activities:
- How is Blixen’s context in colonial Africa and her concerns for unity and harmony with nature and the African people represented in the structure and language of Out of Africa?
- Research Blixen and Out of Africa. Comment on how and why Blixen combines autobiography, memoir, nature writing and fiction in her text.
- Out of Africa addresses enduring and context specific issues. Discuss with detailed reference to the text.
- Choose a socio-political or cultural context and write series of letters to a friend describing events or situations that represent your perspective.
- Write a fable or allegory with original characters and set in a modern context that address some of the issues raised in Out of Africa.
Relationships in Out of Africa
Out of Africa – page references
| Technique/Convention | Example | Reference/Quote |
|---|---|---|
| Place & Context – historical, political and cultural | The farm, natural setting | 13-16,26-28, 81-84,200-202 |
| City of Nairobi | 19-20 | |
| Privileged ideas, voice perspectives & sense of person Concern for ‘truth telling’ and concealment |
View of self as local dignitary, ‘brazen serpent’ | 82-100, 152-154, 155-158, 202-212 |
| Blixen’s gender is clarified – memsahib | 77 | |
| Finch- Hatton’s relationship with her is implicit. (see account of his death) | 293-308 | |
| Failure of farm, sale of farm | 275-286 308-312 | |
| Placing of her people | 317-327 | |
| Mixture of fact and fiction | View of | |
| Arabs | 132 | |
| Somali | 133 | |
| Ngomas – Kikuyu dances | 155-164 | |
| Masai | 141-151 | |
| Safari | 150-151,189-192 228-234 |
|
| Allusions to religion | Christianity Islam |
54-56 |
| Art | See Lulu and tapestry | |
| Memory & relationships– insight into past, present, future | Kamante | 29-45,45-76 |
| Farah | 84-91,100-126, 131-132,135-138, 155-160 308-311 |
|
| As part of Blixen’s thesis of spiritual aristocracy Lulu |
63-76, 221-222 | |
| Old Knudsen-as above | 56-61,164-171 | |
| Emmanuelson -as above | 171-178 | |
| Kinanjui – as above | 127-131, 135-138, 286-293 | |
| Denys Finch-Hatton, as above | 155,193-213, 293-308 | |
| Berkley – Cole , as above | 183-193 | |
| Ingrid Lindstrom | 181-182 | |
| Variety of text types, detailed description of nature, reflections on … | Anecdote -Shooting and trial at the farm. Tribal law. | 84-91,100-126,135-138 |
| Anecdote of Kitosch’s trial- colonial law Allegory of leopard, buffalo/oxen |
238-243 216 |
|
| Oxen as allegory for relationships between colonisers and Africans | 224-227 | |
| Story – Esa | 217-218, 247-259 | |
| Allegory of cock and the chameleon. | 313-314 |
Bibliography
- Bruce, M.H. ‘Masterplots 11: Women’s Literature Series’. 1995. Salem Press, Inc.
- Bender. C. F. ‘Out of Africa’ Masterplots’, Revised Second Edition, 1996. Salem Press, Inc.
- Jadwin, L. ‘Literary Contexts of Novels: Isak Denisen’s ‘Out of Africa’. 2007. Great Neck Publishing.
- Sjåvik. J. ‘Out of Africa’ Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Biography Series,’ 1993. Salem Press Inc.
- Langbaum, R.’The Gayety of Vision.’ 1964. Chatto & Windus. London.
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