In the Comfort of "Frames"

            I guess I never really taken into consideration that my life has been structured by frames.  I grew up believing and doing pretty much everything my parents told me and because of that my life has been built upon frames of reference.  I know I am an American.  I know my race and my family’s heritage. I know I was baptized a Christian.  All of these frames in fact make up my reality and give me a since of self.  Without frames I feel I would be lost in this world and would have no identity.   

            While reading Bessie Head’s novel, A Question of Power I have became very aware of how living a “frameless life” can be a very difficult and emotional task.  As the novel unfolds we see how the protagonist Elizabeth has been dealt a life with no frames of reference.  Her life seems to be marked with mystery and misery.  She does not know who her family is.  She doesn’t know her religion or nationality. Elizabeth does not know who she is.  I could not imagine being in Elizabeth’s shoes.  I believe my family is probably the biggest frame that I identify with.  If I did not have my family as a frame of reference I feel I would have to try to create some sort of meaning or identity, just like Elizabeth is trying to do.

            When Elizabeth is thirteen and goes to the mission school some light is finally shed on her past.  This is a big reality shock for Elizabeth and ultimately turns her world up side down.  In the middle of page 16 there is a good example of Elizabeth’s reaction to past. “The information was almost meaningless to her.  She had always thought of herself as the child of women who had been paid to care for her” (16).  Elizabeth realizes that the life she had been living was a lie.  She really believed that the woman from the foster home was her mother. I could not even think about the pain Elizabeth had to feel when she learns all of this information. It was like the one person who actually cared for her did it because of how messed up her past was.  Further more her imperfect past makes her a black sheep to the rest of society. 

            Even when Elizabeth gets older and becomes a woman she is still trying to find some sort or meaning to her life.  When she moves to Motabeng she is still an outsider. She doesn’t have a frame of reference in regards to a home.  It is also in Motabeng where her visions start to happen and she starts to breakdown.  A good example of this is on page 21, “It was barely three months after her arrival in the village of Motabeng when her life began to pitch over from an even keel, and it remained from then onwards at a pitched-over angle”.  This is when Elizabeth starts to see all sorts of visions like the monk, father, and the Asian man.  I feel these visions that Elizabeth is having is her imaginary way of coping with the past in an attempt to bringing some meaning to her life.  I believe it is not out of the question for someone who has had such a dysfunctional life to start to loose it a bit and make up these imaginary figures. 

            Up to this point in the novel I am still trying to put together the broken pieces of Elizabeth’s frameless life.  When thinking about Elizabeth and Bessie Head as a matter of fact I really gained a sense of just how good my life is.  A life without frames is not the life for me.  I am glad that the novel has tuned me into these frames that bring a great deal of meaning into our lives.