External Conflict In Fiela's Child

In the book Fiela’s Child, a young boy named Benjamin shows up at Fiela Komoetie's door in the middle of the night, alone and crying. Fiela takes him in as one of her own, until he is suddenly ripped from her hold and put with his "real" family. This causes him to lose his grasp on who he thought he was and ultimately creates conflicts within the communities and himself. The author Dalene Matthee illustrates Benjamin/Lukas' struggle to find his identity through the book. She illustrates this through portraying race issues in the story, the struggle of adapting to a new family, and the comparison of the two different families.

The main external conflict Benjamin faces is race conflicts due to him being white and Fiela being colored. This is

a main conflict because of race issues in the community around him and because he lives with Fiela as if she was his biological mother. It is obvious that she isn't, yet she never tried to inform anyone of the child who appeared at her door in the middle of the night. Instead, she chose to raise him as her own in an environment that he would not have been exposed to otherwise. Because Benjamin grew up with Fiela and her family, he acts and speaks differently than a white child typically would have in the time period of the book. He says some questionable things, which is shown when he continuously calls the magistrate 'master', resulting in the magistrate telling him, "I never want to hear you use the word master again! You're a white child and you will learn to speak like a white child.” (Mathee 94). In this quote, the magistrate is telling Benjamin to act like a white child, meaning to not use words like 'master' when referring to adults. The magistrate does not want Benjamin talking like a colored child because he is white and is supposed to be moved to a white family now. You can also see these racism issues surface when the magistrate tells Benjamin, "You are not Fiela Komoetie's child. I think you are old enough to realize it yourself and that is why I don't want you to be unnecessarily difficult." (Mathee 94). This quote is important because Benjamin has believed that Fiela is his actual mother all along since she is the one who raised him. However, the magistrate is telling him that he is wrong. One thing to note is how the magistrate tells Benjamin that he is old enough to realize that he is not Fiela's child. Why is this important? It shows that children in the community are taught to discriminate between the shade of one's skin tone. Unlike Benjamin, who never saw Fiela as just a colored woman, but he saw her as his mom. Another time we see racism come into play with Benjamin's situation is when the magistrate tells him, "One day, when you've grown up, you will come back and thank me for this day." (Mathee 94). What the reader can gather from this quote is that the magistrate believes that living with a colored family is bad and that Benjamin was not taken care of or lived in poor conditions. The magistrate believes he is doing Benjamin a favor by getting him away from Fiela. Thus, he tells him that he will come back and thank him for bringing him into a new family.
The most difficult internal conflict for Benjamin was going from living with Fiela to having to move in and become part of an entirely new family to him overnight.

This is an internal conflict mainly because it effects Benjamin and how he is as a person. Switching families forced him to adopt a new personality and lifestyle that he wasn't used to. Whatever he did in Fiela’s household, was different in the Van Rooyen household. One of the most difficult changes for him to get used to was his name change. "They said his name was Lukas. His name was not Lukas. His name was Benjamin Komoetie." (Mathee 120). This shows that he is in denial about having a new identity and that he is not going to be willing to give up the one he already has without a fight. No matter how many times they call him Lukas, he will always know himself as Benjamin. However, this mindset of Benjamin would later cause problems. For example, when the novel says, "It did not help not to answer when they called him Lukas." (Mathee 120). Because Benjamin did not consider himself Lukas, he never responded to that name. This went on from the moment he met his new parents to a few weeks later. However, this shows the family now losing patience with Benjamin when he refuses to go by his new identity. It is obvious they want him to feel at home despite living somewhere else his entire life but how can they succeed when they can’t talk to Lukas? This attitude will not change with Benjamin. Despite being told that he is to live with this new family, he still believes that Fiela is going to come and rescue him and bring him home. This is shown when Benjamin tells Nina, "My mother will come and fetch me, you'll see." (Mathee 121). Although he was told to forget about Fiela and also told he would not see her again, he still hopes that she will rescue him and bring him to his real

home.
The differences between the Komoeties and the Van Rooyens are both an internal and external conflict for Benjamin/Lukas because while being suddenly forced to live with the Van Rooyens takes a toll on him emotionally, it is also a conflict in the community and to the families as well. It effects Benjamin internally because he is forced to let go of who he has always known himself to be and adopt the identity of a new person. However, despite having to accept it, he still refuses. He still tells everyone who doubts it, "Please your worshipful lord, I'm Fiela Komoeties chils and Selling Komoetie is my father!" (Mathee 119). It is obvious that Benjamin is still holding on to the person he has always been, but it gets difficult. After a while, he learned that he had a new home and started to accept it, as in "He no longer kicked and screamed when they came near him - something said the man's patience would not hold out much longer. This shows that after a while, Benjamin had started to accept that Fiela was not coming back. These internal and external conflicts relate to each other because they are the causes of each other. For example, if there were no racial issues, the external conflicts (Benjamin being forced to switch families) would not have happened. He would have been able to live with Fiela without conflicts. If he was allowed to live with Fiela, he would not be forced to live with another family. This would mean that he would have no internal conflicts, such as his identity being challenged. This shows that without one, the other event wouldn’t have happened.
The differences of the families and the racism issues in the story play a big role in Benjamin's conflicts. He battles these conflicts in order to find out who he is. Not if he is Benjamin or Lukas, but who he is on the inside to himself, not to people on the outside. Overall, the author does an adequate job of portraying all of Benjamin's internal and external conflicts throughout the story and showing how they connect and influence each other. In the end, these conflicts help Benjamin/Lukas discover who he believes he truly is.