The complicity and secrecy in The Smell of Apples Anonymous College

According to the world population review rape statics by country 2019, South Africa made it to the top of the list as the country with the highest rates of rape. This has led it to being labelled the rape capital of the world. Mark Behr’s novel, The Smell of Apples is a detailed memoir of a young boy, Marnus Erasmus, who grows up in a “perfect God fearing” Afrikaner home in the time of Apartheid South Africa. As the narrative unfold, the reader and Marnus get to see that not everything is perfect in the Erasmus household, there is a lot of secrets and the biggest one is Marnus witnessing his best Friend, Frikkie being raped by his father and deciding to keep it a secret. In this essay, with reference to the events that unfold in the narrative, I’ll be analysing Marnus’ complicity in his father’s violent rape of Frikkie even though he doesn’t physically take part in it. This will be done by looking at the broader significance of the silence in terms of Afrikaner politics, ideology and masculine identity.

Marnus Erasmus the child narrator of The Smell of Apples narrates the dynamics of his life and the Apartheid South Africa from a naïve perspective. As the narrative jumps back and forth from child Marnus to adult Marnus...