The Story Of An African Farm Book Analysis

When The Story of an African Farm was published in 1883, the title gave no indication to the readers what the complex scope of the novel was really about."The Story of an African Farm" is a difficult work to describe. It must be read several times, and carefully pondered before all of its secrets are unlocked.
The book revolves around the lives of three children (and, later, adults) who live in the Karroo plains of South Africa. The main focus, however, is on two of the characters - Waldo, the earnest and deeply curious son of the German farmkeeper, and Lyndall, the beautiful, outspoken and rebellious orphan who suffers all her life for her ideals.
The story takes it's readers through two different stories: a young boy who grows up questioning
Her questions seem like cartels, challenges. Why can't she have a job? Why can't she be educated or independent without the stigma 'weirdo' unflinchingly attached to her? Why must she be dubbed 'strange?' The reader must always ask why, when reading this book. The three characters, Lyndall especially, endure a lot of hardship, a hardship that mirrored the very author's life, i.e. her cold and distant upbringing, the religious retraints placed on her life as well as the life-clenching grasp that old norms had on women of that period. African Farm was Olive Schreiner's liberty, her freedom from the societal choke
The second, and shortest section is entitled "Times and Seasons". The book divides time based on the seasons of Waldo's life is interesting. Instead of marking time by days, months, or years, it marks time based on the episodes he goes through in his life, each of which are changes in his perspective on religion, is somewhat of a summary of what has gone before, dealing mostly with Waldo's journey from Christian fanaticism to dispairing atheism, and foreshadows some of what is to come. The third, and longest section, covers the lives of the characters as adults, and is by far the most powerful, and moving piece of the