Through the garden of good and evil...

Through the garden of good and evil...

           Have you ever felt like you were torn between two worlds, your head spinning with indecisiveness and confusion, trying to find the best solution to your dilemma? That’s what I am feeling right now. As I look at the blog topics for this week’s class, and reflect on what I have read, I find myself torn between love and hate. I hate the book I have read because it is deliberately confusing and tedious, but on the other hand it has caused me to look at my life and recognize the frames of reference that I hold. I love that in such a daunting book with such chaos and confusion I am able to see a woman move from complete mental illness to forming some kind of self regard and identification. Elizabeth in Bessie Head’s “A Question of Power” is journeying through hell in order to come out the other side a new and happier woman. The novel is based on a two way relationship, “dislocation and groundedness, madness and meaning, specific context and generality, suffering and redemption, fragmentation and wholeness” (Burton, 76). Throughout the novel we watch Elizabeth be tormented by the devilish creatures residing in her head. It is through them that she learns her new frames of reference and rebuilds the person inside herself.

Elizabeth started off life with no one to guide her through her paths in life. Since she was born her life has been based on craziness. Her mother was taken away and put into a nut house, showing her a negative frame that she can now identify with, “now you know. Do you think I can bear the stigma of insanity alone? Share it with me,” (Head, 17), and she had no culture or race to identify with because she is a mix of black and white, which also caused her to be socially shunned. She wasn’t able to look to others for guidance and support, she was alone. It was in this solitude that life began to suffocate her; she was overtaken by the spirits in her mind, allowing them to torture and sicken her mental state.  It wasn’t until Elizabeth found something that she was proficient at that she finally started shifting her life in a more positive light. Accomplishing small goals can offer confidence that only you can get from something that you do. For example when I study really hard for a test, I know the result is a reflection of all the hard work I did, and it gives me a boost of self esteem in knowing that I did it. Elizabeth found something to give her confidence and make her feel successful. She began gardening and truly appreciating the gift of life and living. She was able to plant a seed in land that never accepted her for who she was, nurture and watch it grow, and sell the product with the satisfaction and pride for creating it.

Elizabeth loneliness begins seeking out the relationships of others. It is in this that she finds some friendship with a gardening co-worker, Kenosi and regarded “the Kenosi woman’s sudden appearance as one of the miracles or accidents that saved her life” (p.89). Perhaps it is because she was also involved in the working together process of gardening, but also Kenosi is a native that Elizabeth can identify with. When Kenosi speaks Setswana to Elizabeth’s son Shorty, she thinks about how this distraction has brought her back to reality and is thankful for the rescue. For once she is not socially shunned because of her ethnicity; she is embraced for her hardworking skills in gardening.

After Elizabeth’s awakening she says that she finally “felt as normal and ordinary as other people” (pg200) because she no longer had the men and women in her head, trying to control her thoughts. She was finally able to look at herself through her eyes and not that of Sello, Dan or Medusa. She is her own person and through those demons she has learned that she is Elizabeth regardless of her frames, and searching for new positive frames is a journey. As she progresses through life she will find frames to identify with, already obtaining a friend and the garden, which give her a sense of belonging. Being alone is a lot harder when you don’t have anything in your life to look at and think positively about. She has something now; “she placed a soft hand over her land. It was a gesture of belonging” (pg206).