Symbolism In Benjamin Komoeties's Life

From the beginnings of Benjamin Komoeties’s childhood, he has always had a great love for water, in the form of streams and lakes, and a great love for playing on these water bodies with ships. As a young boy, Benjamin plays with small wooden boats and beetle-men, but as he advances in age and gathers more and more life experience, he finds himself on the coast of a vast ocean, where he is an assistant for Caliel September, and later an oarsman for John Benn. Matthee cleverly uses the boats that he encounters as symbols for the events in his life, that eventually lead Benjamin home to his family in the kloof. These carefully crafted vessels weave together key points in Benjamin’s transition from childhood to adulthood, as well as his transition from the kloof to the forest, from forest to the coastal town, and his return to the kloof, during which his identity and character are solidified.
This wouldn’t be strange, had Benjamin not lived a several day’s journey from the port town, or in the kloof where, “God had had nothing left but stones and dust and wagon trees and rhinoceros bush and aloes.” (Matthee, 12) On the day that the two peace breakers go to Fiela’s home, Benjamin is only twelve years old (19), and he is playing with his wooden boats that his mother says he is constantly carving and floating down the river (16). Specifically, Benjamin walks up to her mother and the gentlemen talking right when Fiela believes that she avoided the men finding out about Benjamin’s race. In this key moment, standing in the corner with a dripping boat in his small hands, Benjamin forever alters his own life and begins a journey to discover his own individual