51 pages • 1 hour read
A Question of Power
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Part 2, Pages 103-150Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Dan”
Part 2, Pages 103-120 Summary
Elizabeth thinks of herself as a general and believes in the “general’s code”—mainly, she believes it’s important to never conduct a war with someone who’s inferior.
Dan arrives “out of nowhere,” but he’s a cattle millionaire, a friend of Sello, and an African nationalist. His “extreme masculinity” captives her, and he kisses her. Elizabeth says that they are strangers and shouldn’t kiss, but she concedes she’s in an “easily invaded world” (105). His kisses make her feel like a queen.
The Father returns with a headless woman who shortly thereafter finds her head and then flies into the sun. Elizabeth flies to the edge of the world, where a man and woman occupy a heavenly climate. She remembers a choir on Christmas singing about “God on high” and thinks God should be down on Earth with the people.
Two days after Christmas, Kenosi tells Elizabeth about Tom—a white American who helps them with the garden while he sings to himself a song about Dolly. Tom is 10 years younger than Elizabeth, and he just graduated college, where he earned an agriculture degree. The garden starts talking to Elizabeth—it wants her to turn it into a place for a variety of vegetables. Elizabeth invites Tom to her house, and he loves her stew.
B, The Womb, a woman from the village, balances like a ballerina, and Dan calls her the “balance” between Elizabeth and him. Elizabeth thinks her “nightmare” is done, but the torture returns, and she depicts Dan as a child molester and a gay person. He throws a rope around the Father’s neck and drags him to hell. He also pushes him off cliffs and kills him in car crashes, but the Father has 9,000 lives. He returns and warns Elizabeth that Dan will blow her to bits, and there won’t be anything left of her. Elizabeth compares her situation to David and Goliath, except David lacks a sling and is “helplessly feminine,” and Goliath is much more monstrous.
Dan shows Elizabeth “beautiful people” as “chain-gang slaves” (119). He tells her about men and sex workers. Six people carry a coffin with the brown-suited Sello inside. One of Sello’s kids, a little girl, looks at Elizabeth.
Part 2, Pages 120-136 Summary
Elizabeth thinks about the “unlikely friendships” people make on the Motabeng projects, and she thinks about Tom. Elizabeth and Tom discuss James Baldwin. Tom talks about school with Elizabeth’s son. Her son spells “evaporation” as “ivaporation,” and Tom realizes the English teacher is spelling words phonetically.
Dan brings a girl with her hair tied in small chunks around her head. He tells Elizabeth her hair isn’t “properly African.” The girl has a sewing machine with a handle, so she’s “Miss Sewing-Machine.” Dan says she can “go […] the whole night” (127), and they have sex on the bed beside Elizabeth. Dan has a “harem” of 71 women, and he’s always erect. The women wash compulsively (Dan doesn’t like dirt), and they wear Elizabeth’s dresses and underwear.
Miss Wriggly-Bottom arrives naked. She’s Chinese, and her “sex” is on the outside. She can’t “go […] the whole night” (127), so Dan’s limitless desire kills her. Miss Sewing-Machine returns. The record also returns, calling Elizabeth a “dog” and filthy, claiming Africans will eat her.
Elizabeth hears her son cry, and he asks if he can have “tablets” to help him sleep. Elizabeth says he doesn’t need them—he sees jubilant images of friends, rabbits, dogs, and chocolates. Her son falls asleep, and Elizabeth compares the nightmarish things that she sees to what her son sees.
Tom eats at Elizabeth’s house and says the United States invaded Cambodia. He doesn’t like the United States. They’re not helpful: They just give people gum and soda. Tom supports the Black Power movement, seeing it as a means to strengthen economic development. Elizabeth doesn’t like the exclusiveness of the movement and compares their raised fists to the Nazi salute.
Tom wonders why Elizabeth is so contradictory, and Elizabeth explains what she’s learning “internally”: Political coups are a cycle of thieves, and people shouldn’t think in terms of “I and mine.” The greed and arrogance of the soul are the problem, but goodness can come along. Elizabeth thinks Tom symbolizes a stable force and asks him to take care of her. He says he will.
Part 2, Pages 136-150 Summary
Sello sits in a chair in his house as village kids come in and loudly eat bread and jam. Dan covers Sello with a white sheet. Giggling, Sello requests that Dan leave his small nose uncovered. Supposedly, Sello is jealous of Dan’s “big” nose. Sello confesses to myriad evils, but they took place in the past, and there’s no record of them. He remembers a girl who rolled her eyes, and Elizabeth wonders if Sello molests his children.
Elizabeth listens to young children and their playful dialogue about Julius Caesar’s age and being too busy for bedtime. She wonders if anyone else has been in her position—forced to live with terrible nightmares and secrets for such a long time. A tiny bird brings comfort, but Dan returns with Miss Body Beautiful, who has golden-brown legs and a chocolate cake. She’s not clean, so Dan uses a holy-water sprinkler.
After fixing lunch for her son, the Womb enters, and Dan makes more “records” for Elizabeth. He tells her that she should be jealous of the women—he “goes” with them because Elizabeth is “inferior.” Other women arrive, including Miss Pelican-Beak, Miss Chopper, Miss Pink Sugar-Icing, and Madame Make-Love-On-the-Floor. Dan and Sello call each other gay and accuse each other of having sex with basically anything.
Elizabeth has trouble sorting out what’s going on. She feels like a passive witness to hell, and she wonders what she did to bring about her suffering. She thinks about her lack of parents and how that makes a person extra aware of life’s dangers. She remembers when she kissed a married man and believes that that’s the only questionable thing she has ever done. The man wasn’t even a good kisser.
Dan listens to Elizabeth and creates vibration in her hand, which she rejects. Dan starts banging and screams that the groaning is intolerable. Looking like Casanova, he leaves.
Part 2, Pages 103-150 Analysis
The war diction in this section links to the themes of Power and Helplessness and Mental Health Versus Self-Discovery, and it also ties to the motif of Gender and Sexuality. The narrator states, “[T]hough a woman, lived by the general’s code” (103). In the story, generals are men, but women can be generals—once again, Head subverts historical gender dynamics. She also continues emphasizing self-discovery, turning her quest into a heroic, empowering battle. Elizabeth isn’t a civilian, a casualty, or a regular soldier, but a general. Her code centers on the belief, “Never wage war on an inferior” (103). The commandant illuminates Elizabeth’s role in her spiritual journey. In the context of the code, Elizabeth isn’t a victim of Medusa or Dan—instead, she chooses not to fight back because they’re beneath her.
Tom works in the garden and provides Elizabeth with a friend and a conversation partner. Like Kenosi, he’s a stable presence in the external world, but their dialogue alludes to real-world events that highlight how the external world can be as violent as Elizabeth’s inner world. With the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, the dialogue incorporates America’s deadly and destructive war in Vietnam. Through the Black Power reference, the dialogue makes a connection to the militant Black Panther Party and its forceful drive for autonomy and independence. Elizabeth sees the Black Panthers in the context of the Nazis, connecting their raised fists to the raised-arm Nazi salute. The Nazis were responsible for systematically killing people with physical and mental conditions, along with Jewish people and many other groups of people. The violence of Elizabeth’s quest for self and spiritual knowledge matches the brutality of 20th-century world events.
With the introduction of Dan’s “harem,” sex continues to symbolize toxicity. Dan uses the sex workers to torment Elizabeth and make her feel bad, telling her, “You are supposed to feel jealous. […] You haven’t got what that girl has got” (127). To highlight the dehumanization, Head uses hyperbole. She gives them exaggerated names like Miss Sewing-Machine or Miss Wriggly-Bottom, labeling the women with objects or body parts. Dan degrades the women by constantly washing them, and he reveals their disposability when he kills Miss Wriggly-Bottom by subjecting her to too much sex.
Like Elizabeth’s husband, neither Dan nor Sello can control his desires. Sello becomes caught up in an uncontrollable sexuality when Elizabeth accuses him of sexually abusing children, and he and Dan accuse each other of being gay and having sex “with cows and anything on earth” (148). The motif of Gender and Sexuality remains subversive. Head arguably portrays sexual dominance as a weakness, suggesting a lack of control must accompany that dominance.
Children continue to symbolize innocence. Elizabeth’s son asks if he can have sleeping pills, but he doesn’t see “horrid things”— he sees “rabbits, playtime friends, dogs, chocolates” (130-31). While the adult Elizabeth experiences nightmares, her son enters a “wonderland.” His relative purity creates an enchanting, warm world to juxtapose against Elizabeth’s internal thoughts.
The motif of God and Evil links to the concept of justice and suffering. Elizabeth asks, “God, what is happening to me? What have I done in the past to suffer so much?” (149). This question reflects a belief that suffering has a cause, perhaps a divinely ordained one, and that she must have somehow done something to deserve the series of cruel and abusive events she endures. This ties to the theme of Power and Helplessness, as Elizabeth feels like she has no control over her life. Whether she survives the journey isn’t up to her but up to God, given her lack of agency and autonomy.
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