Out of Africa Book Four, From an Immigrant's Notebook: From "The Wild Came to the Aid of the Wild" to "Of the Millennium" Summary & Analysis

Analysis

These chapters open the fourth section of Out of Africa. It is a section that is notably different from the others because it is made up of very small fragments and anecdotes. These pieces do not connect to each other in any obvious manner. They are not chronological and are not presented in a clear thematic form. Instead, they are simply plopped down in an unclear order and the reader is the one to link them together. Several themes can be seen among the fragments, however, some which have been previously developed and some which are new.

Dinesen's idea that Africa is a pastoral landscape, whose elements exist in harmony with each other, returns in "the wild came to the aid of the wild." Here she suggests that a lion relieved an ornery ox from having his spirit broken, by securing his death. The idea that the lion helped the ox by bringing on death is similar to the previous suggestion that Masai warriors will die if placed in prison for more than three months. Both rest upon the notion that African people and creatures are so liberated and free in their wild environment that confinement will kill them. Furthermore, both indicate that African animals possess powerful control over their selves and can simply will their death if they want it. This notion is slightly romantic and unrealistic, even though it fits within Dinesen's pastoral vision.

The most important new theme concerns Dinesen's progressive perspective on the relationship of the races, while also condemning certain practices by European settlers. The former comes across in "Of the Two Races," a piece in which Dinesen argues that whites and blacks each pay an equal role in each others lives. Although this may not sound like forward thinking given the current standard of multicultural thought, it was groundbreaking at the time Dinesen lived in Africa and she published her book. Many Europeans then believed that they were important, guiding figures for Africans. They saw the natives as lesser humans, akin to children, who needed constant guidance and moral instruction. Dinesen's willingness to concede the importance of natives as significant humans therefore carries a subversive ring.

Dinesen's condemnation of colonial practices continues in "Esa's Story" and "The Elite of Bournemouth." Both reveal racist practices by settlers: a doctor who believes he is above treating natives and a woman who can only hire her servants with threats. These accounts show that the narrator may be a rarity amongst European settlers, since she treats her own squatters with relative respect. The difference between the narrator's behavior and that of these settlers, however, appears to be part of Dinesen's point. As such, these two episodes reveal not only colonial cruelty, but also Dinesen's sense of superiority and her opinions about aristocracy.

The "Elite of Bournemouth" episode particularly suggests Dinesen's ideas on aristocracy. Bournemouth is an insignificant city on the Southern English coast. Although the doctor thinks he is important because he once catered to its elite, Dinesen clearly believes that he is not. In fact, the doctor's failure to act nobly by being willing to treat natives merely shows his middle-class roots and his bourgeoisie mentality. Dinesen, after all, far outranks this doctor just as she far outranks the elite of Bournemouth. Her closest friends belong to the best of the British aristocracy. In real life, she once entertained the Prince of Wales on her farm. Yet although she outclasses the doctor, she still provides medical treatment to her squatters. She does so because she possesses a truly aristocratic sensibility, unlike the doctor and the government official's wife. She acts nobly toward people and treats them with respect. Her essential dignity allows her to connect to the many natives who are equally dignified. The failure for the doctor to understand this level of interaction between various members of the aristocratic milieu, whether native or European, simply reveals how he is middle class.

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