The Smell of Apples

“My name is really Marnus, but when Dad speaks to me he mostly says ‘my son’ or ‘my little bull’ and him and Mum also like calling me ‘my little piccanin.’” 

These opening lines, which echo the opening lines of Moby-Dick, establish the importance of identity. Marnus, poised on the threshold of adulthood and just beginning the serious business of defining who he is, here sorts through a plethora of names. 

“I know that it’s one of the greatest commandments, never to take the name of the Lord in vain. It’s one of those sins where the punishment gets carried from one generation to the next. Even if you don’t take the name of the Lord in vain yourself, but your great grandfather did, you’ll still be punished for it.” 

What the novel explores is how for apartheid and Christianity coexisted. Here Marnus chastises Frikkie’s father for swearing. One can apply his logic, however, to the far greater sin of apartheid, which is similarly passed from one generation to the next. 

“One year we didn’t even see a single [whale] and then Jan said it was because the bay doesn’t belong to nature anymore. He says the bay has been taken over by the factories.” 

The novel explores the catastrophic impact of whites on the culture of black South Africa. By describing the exhaustion of the fisheries along False Bay, and particularly the loss of the magnificent whales that were part of the native folklore, Behr underscores how whites destroyed the world they colonized and how that trespass is a violation of nature.