Commentaire "A Dry White Season" P.222

The passage I was given is located in the fifth chapter of book 3. It occurs just after the dialogue between Ben and the professor Johnson Seroke about how much we do really know about the others. In this passage there is no dialogue, but only the narrator denouncing the numerous threats and forms of intimidation of the corrupted society on Ben’s life. To intimidate means to frighten or threaten someone, usually in order to persuade him or her to do something.

In the first lines, the narrator explains that Ben feels monitored. In fact, there is a certain “awareness of being surveyed” (l.1); even going shopping in a supermarket on a Saturday isn’t privy anymore, because you could easily recognize the agents spying in the crowd. He affirms you could expect these men anywhere, even in a church (l.10), which proves how far they are capable of going to keep an eye on you. The Special Branch seems to control everything; they check Ben’s letters in his mailbox before he reads them, “nothing was private to them,” he says. And they wouldn’t even be discreet, because they leave evidences on purpose so you know they have an eye on you. Ben reacted to all those acts by depression, worry, doubt and uncertainty. It provoked tensions and quarrels with external persons.

According to Ben, those people try to intimidate you so you learn to live with them. In fact, you become so terrified that you wouldn’t dare to do any foolish act, that’s what he meant, you live by their rules. Finding a hammer-and-sickle painted on your home door or your four tires flat were other technics of intimidation. They would even call you anonymously at 3 o’clock in a morning to drive you crazy. How can you live peacefully with such an omnipresence of fear? But for Ben, the straw that broke the camel is when he found the slogans on the blackboard of his classroom. At that moment, his image has changed; even another teacher said, “How can a teacher expect his pupils to look up to him unless his own conduct is beyond reproach” (last line).

To conclude, we discover in this passage the different technics of intimidation and threat used by the corrupted society in this passage. We also learned how did Ben manage all this pressure and how he reacted to the humiliation he was confronted to.

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