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Van der Vyver may sometimes walk past his son on the farm and fail to acknowledge him, but there is a bond "shared" between them which others cannot penetrate, a level of enjoyment...
Family: The story depicts complex family relationships, including Van der Vyver’s relationship with his son Lucas and with his wife, Alida.
Throughout most of the story, it appears to readers that Van der Vyver, a white Afrikaner farmer, has killed a Black farmhand named Lucas during a game drive. Only in the last line of the story does Gordimer reveal that Lucas “was not the farmer’s boy; he was his son” (Paragraph 16).
They will not know that the young Black man killed by the white man's negligence was not simply Van der Vyver's farmhand, but his son.
The ironic closing lines reflect on how the newspapers, on seeing Van der Vyver’s face and calling him guilty, will be correct, but for the wrong reason: Lucas was not just a farmhand, but Van der Vyver’s son.
His observations of Black people at large, especially those who are involved in the anti-apartheid movement, cast them as greedy, loud, and violent. These views are ironic given that Lucas, who Van der Vyver does not mentally acknowledge as part of his family, is in fact his son.
People also ask
Does van der Vyver have a bond with his son?
Does van der Vyver have a black son?
How many children does van der Vyver have?
What happened between Lucas and Van der Vyver?
What is the premise of Van der Vyver?
What does van der Vyver believe?
He is married to a white woman, Alida, with whom he has three children: Magnus, Helena, and Karel. Van der Vyver also has an illegitimate child, Lucas, with an unnamed black woman, who works on Van der Vyver’s farm along with her family.
