I went to lay pipes today for the new house and Mr. Lurie was nice enough to help me out. He was worried that he wouldn’t have the expertise to lay the pipes but I told him it was ok; he was only handing me tools anyways. Mr. Lurie is a nice man, a good man, but he can also be a mean man. I know he is just looking out for his daughter but he doesn’t want to look out for anything else at all. He focuses too much on his daughter; he needs to see the greater picture of things sometimes. I knew he was going to ask me about the day Pollux killed the dogs. I know Pollux didn’t know what he was doing. Pollux is too young to understand good from bad still, especially since he has grown up with those crooks. Now that Pollux is in my family I can raise him right. Though he may be a bad boy now, he is only a boy and I can change him to be a man – a good man. As for Mr. Lurie though, he will never see this. He sees Pollux as a black crook and that is all. Mr. Lurie has good intentions about his daughter but he just needs to see the bigger picture.
The above paragraph is the diary entry of Petrus after laying pipes with David Lurie. In this scene, David asks Petrus for the information on this boy Pollux that he saw at Petrus’s house the night before. Petrus responds by saying, “David, it is a hard thing you are saying, that this boy is a thief.” (137) These first words by Petrus show us that Petrus has the opposite opinion of David, therefore, in the diary entry, I tried to emphasize the disconnection between David and Petrus through Petrus saying that David “needs to see the greater picture of things,” which then gives the reader the sense that Petrus is looking down on David.
The passage in the book also talks about how Petrus says that Pollux is too young to “go to jail” (138). Later in the novel we also learn that Pollux is going to be living with and be family of Petrus. I tried to reflect these two things in Petrus’s diary entry by Petrus saying that he can change Pollux from a bad boy to a good man by being a father figure to him. It also shows how Petrus thinks about David not understanding how it is to grow up in East Cape without a proper father figure. Petrus believes he can change this in Pollux, and therefore that is justification enough to him to not let Pollux go to jail.
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I liked how you justified Pollux. I can see how Petrus would want to make a man out of this boy, who grew up with "corrupted" men, per say. He probably did not have a father figure to look up to, who could have directed him to a good path. And now, Petrus wants to be that father Pollux probably never had. Because Pollux does not seem to be mentally well, I suppose, petrus is trying to convince David that this boy needs help, and cannot be sent to jail. But of course, david does not reason with that justification because all he is aware of is that his daughter was "invaded" and wants revenge or justice to be served over her misfortune. Nice insight.
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