The Principle of the Principal as Principal: Narratorial Identity and Perspective in Alan Paton’s Diepkloof Stories

Abstract

Alan Paton’s short fiction remains a neglected area in South African literary studies. Apart from ephemeral reviews, only a handful of critical works have paid any attention to Paton’s stories, and most of these have tended to regard the stories as slight and fragmentary. It is my contention, however, that there is much of interest and value in Paton’s stories, not only as literary works, but for what they reveal about Paton’s response to the historical era in which they were produced. This article focusses on the “Diepkloof stories”, which explore his experiences as Principal of Diepkloof Reformatory. Though set at the time of his principalship in the 1930s and 1940s, they were written in the 1950s – after the publication of Cry, the Beloved Country, and, importantly, during the first decade of the National Party’s implementation of apartheid. Viewed as a contemporaneous reaction to the unfolding events of the time, they represent a perspective different from that of Cry, the Beloved Country and of his non-fictional writing, one that is bleaker, more sombre, even pessimistic. The stories hover between the genres of autobiography and fiction, participating in the conventions of both but never fully committing themselves to either category. The tension between Paton’s public identity as writer and social activist and his multivalent role in the stories as author, narrator, main character and source material, marks the stories as unique in South African literature, and raises intriguing narratological questions about the status of the texts.