Post-reading
1.Identify who ‘the three of them’ are, mentioned in the fifth last paragraph.(3)
2.Summarise the hardships people on earth suffered because of the conflict in the night sky.(5)
3.How does the stars’ comment that Atai is ‘as brilliant as the moon’ influence events?(4)
4.What does the man in the moon’s reaction to the stars’ opinion of him show about him in the context of universal values?(5)
5.Discuss your response to the story.(2)
Enrichment activity
Do some research about one of the following and then report back to the rest of the class:
•how the moon influences the tides
•the different phases of the moon
•natural disasters that occurred in Africa during the past ten years.
Black star
by Rodney Gedye
A note about the story
This romantic story deals with more than the love relationship between two young people, Sarie and Jan. Against the backdrop of a fishing community, they are challenged by an accident that changes Jan’s life and he feels he has lost his identity and everything he had, including Sarie’s love. He is seriously wrong, not understanding how much she loves him. When he drunkenly attacks someone in the community, he runs away, thinking that he has killed the man. Sarie goes after him, knowing where he would hide from the police, and tries to persuade him to give himself up. She challenges him to do what is right – and when something happens to her, he has to overcome his own fears for her sake.
The writer creates a vivid picture not only of the fishing village and some of its inhabitants, but also of the sea, from which they gain their livelihood. When this relationship between man and nature is disrupted, a fisherman might well lose hope of future happiness. Two dramatic events have a direct impact on the young fisherman’s life; how he deals with each circumstance affects his relationship with the girl he loves directly. How she deals with his problems reveals her strength of character and love. The theme of guilt and redemption runs through the story; the plot structure addresses common moral issues; and the characters demonstrate that love and understanding should underpin our personal relationships.
Pre-reading
•Discuss the title: what could a black star be a symbol of?
•Skim the story for the names of all the characters and write them down. How do you know who the main characters are?
•Go through the footnotes to make sure that you understand unfamiliar expressions and can refer to them quickly when reading the story.
During reading
Remember to refer to a footnote when you come across an unfamiliar word.
•Try to understand Jan’s feelings about his accident.
•Try to pick out what is:
–background information about Sarie and Jan’s relationship
–the situation at the point where Sarie learns about Jan’s present situation.
Black star
Sarie reached the top of the spur and straightened up, bracing her bare feet against the slope of the rock. Before her lay the fishing beach, with a line of boats – bright and big-bellied as giant puff-fish thrown up to die – basking above the highwater mark.
A warm breeze, sweeping up the smell of diesel oil, new paint, and rotting fish-heads, threaded light fingers through the hair behind her ears, and smoothed the faded cotton dress against her body. A body that was young and firm, and curved as a woman’s should be.
For a while she just stood on the rock, listening to the sounds of work and laughter blown from the boats. Then cupping her hands about her mouth, she whistled. Hard, like a man, drawing the sound out and up and down short.
The men looked towards her, and she waved. And when they showed no sign of having seen her, she waved again. But one by one they turned back to work. The beach was suddenly very quiet, and even the wind seemed to drop away.
All right, she thought, all right – pretend you haven’t seen me. And climbing down to the beach, she started across to the boats. As she passed along them, picking her way through the litter of crayfish pots and stretched nets, head bent and watching the sun-baked sand pressing up between her toes, she felt the men staring after her.
They were happy people, simple and direct. Full of laughing gay friendliness, they teased her often, but never for long; first one breaking in and then another, all white smiles and pretty words, as though she were the only girl in the village. This time it was different. The silence and disregard remained unbroken and frightening. It was studied, alien, like something reserved for women who had lost men at sea.
Reaching her father’s boat, the girl hoisted herself over the side. The old man had his back to her and was bent over the open engine-housing.
‘What’s wrong, Pa?’ she asked with a smile; waiting for him to turn; expecting the big sly wink that would place him with her, against the rest.
He turned half towards her. The deep-lined brown face held an odd mixture of discomfort, perplexity13, and sadness.
‘Nothing – the fuel pump – I was just checking the pump.’
‘Are you going out tonight?’
‘Nee, I don’t think so …’ For a moment his eyes lifted to hers, as though he were searching them for the knowledge of something. And failing to find it, he looked away, rubbed his hands down the front of his soiled khaki shirt, and turned back to the engine.
‘You had better get home,’ he said quietly.
Behind the words the girl sensed all she had seen in his face, and the wind that had warmed her on the rocks suddenly cut over the gunwale14, striking cold and unfriendly through the thin dress.
Knowing that the thing he could not bring himself to tell her would have to wait, she left the beach and climbed the grey road that led up towards the shoulder of the headland. The way the men went home to their shacks, nesting in a cluster on the first rise of the mountains. The way Jan used to come to her, singing, tall and lithe, sinewed as a coil of rope. Jan, who had always been so proud of his strength, always so invincible15 …
Until that rain-blasted night when the men carried him on a litter of oars and torn sail, and laid him gently on the kitchen table, his crushed arm draped across his chest. That night a black star had come to rest over Sarie for the first time in all her eighteen years.
After the incident they had carried him to her, because she was his promised woman, and it was a woman’s place to care for her man when he was broken. But he was hurt beyond her aid. He needed the hospital doctors, and they had come and taken him to Cape Town and cut off the dead arm. By the time he returned to the village, he was drinking away his fear of her pity, and so avoided her.
The other people treated him kindly at first, trying not to notice the empty sleeve, but he had drunkenly spat the kindness back in their faces. Soon they were turning away from him, and saying that the doctors had cut off his spirit too.
Sarie had told herself to wait; that her time was when the bitterness had eaten itself out of him. But before it could, he went back to Cape Town, with its easier money and cheap, rotgut brandy.
When she reached the shacks, she turned into the rusty, wire-fenced yard of the first one: a low whitewashed wood and corrugated iron building that leaned back against the slope and faced the sea across a patch of untended vegetables and stunted, wind-scrubbed peach trees.
The gate creaked closed behind