A Question of Power

Sello is a dynamic character. He is Elizabeth’s mentor and an antagonist. He’s also a part of Elizabeth, as he’s the product of her mind. Presumably, she remembers the Sello who lives in the village—a family man who drives a green truck—and imagines him as a wise monk. Sello creates Medusa and Dan, and Sello comes from Elizabeth’s mind. So, like Sello, Medusa and Dan are a part of Elizabeth. Despite this, Elizabeth treats Sello, Medusa, and Dan like separate, autonomous characters. She views them as separate people, and they impact her life as if they were from the material world.

At first, Sello is a spectral presence, with Elizabeth concluding, “[W]hatever it was was not a danger to her life.” She then sees him in “the soft, white, flowing robes of a monk” (22). As a monk, he’s Elizabeth’s spiritual guide. He tells her, “There are so many terrible lessons you have to learn this time” (36). His main lesson relates to God and morals, telling her, “You don’t realize the point at which you become evil” (145). Sello’s role as a spiritual mentor pushes him into an antagonistic position. To teach her, he creates Medusa and Dan, who torture Elizabeth almost to the point of death. After the journey, Sello tells her, “I’m sorry it was so painful” (200). Elizabeth doesn’t hold a grudge against Sello. She adores him after she first meets him, and she loves him when they part, asking him to be her brother.

Elizabeth is likely talking about Sello when she asks Tom, “What would you do if you were both God and Satan at the same time?” (161). Aside from creating evil Medusa and Dan, Sello claims he killed women and, in the past, he had “a depth of evil you cannot name” (36). Unlike Medusa and Dan, Sello isn’t irrevocably evil. He realizes his evil and corrects it. The path to discovery is rough. He tells Elizabeth, “It is when you cry, in the blackest hour of despair, that you stumble on a source of goodness” (34). To give Elizabeth similar knowledge, he replicates the “blackest hour of despair” for three to four years.

Sello has a romantic interest in Medusa and an antagonist in Dan. Both characters dominate him—though Sello outlasts them, proving his point that meekness is superior to displays of force. Sello cements his simplicity through his style. He wears monk robes, and the other Sello wears an unassuming brown suit. Elizabeth starts to believe that Sello molests children, leading her to accuse the Sello in the village of molesting children. The Sello in the village isn’t a sexual predator, and though Sello admits to extensive evils, there’s no proof that he preyed on children.

Dan is the story’s antagonist and the foil for Sello and Elizabeth. He torments Elizabeth by screaming into her skull and having sex with the sex workers in her bed while she is also in it. He also humiliates Sello, draping him in a white sheet. As a foil, he has traits that Sello and Elizabeth lack, and these characteristics reinforce his stormy wickedness. While Sello and Elizabeth do not demonstrate much sexual desire, Dan is full of lust. He declares, “I am the king of sex. I go and go. I go with them all” (168). His “harem” of 71 women highlights his extreme sexuality. Even his “handsome big nose” (143) symbolizes his outsized virility. Sello tells Elizabeth he created Dan so he could study absolute evil and so Elizabeth could learn about it. After Dan vanishes, Sello reveals that Dan is Satan. There are no good parts to Dan—he’s thoroughly wicked.

Though it’s less obvious than the multiples of Sello, there appears to likely be a Dan in the village who is friends with the Sello in the village. Elizabeth explains, “[Dan was] one of the very few cattle millionaires of the country. He ordered a fantastic array of suits from somewhere, and he was short, black, and handsome. He was the friend of Sello” (104). Elizabeth’s Sello harms the Motabeng Sello, but the Dan in Elizabeth’s world doesn’t adversely impact the Dan in Motabeng (if there is one).

Medusa is the femme fatale character in Head’s story. She’s a seductive, alluring woman who causes chaos and destruction. Like Dan, she dominates and possesses a forceful sexuality. Through her peculiar vagina, she sends Elizabeth “a slow, deep, sensuous bomb. It was like falling into deep, warm waters, lazily raising one hand and resting in a heaven of bliss” (44). Her vagina also arrests Sello, with the narrator concluding, “He seemed to be desperately attached to that thing Medusa had which no other woman had” (64). As with Dan (and as a “femme fatale”), Medusa uses sex to manipulate and harm—sex is abusive and never positive.

Medusa is from Greek mythology. In mythic stories, she’s a part of the Gorgon family, so she comes from sea gods. Her two sisters are immortal, but Medusa remains mortal yet frightening. Her hair is a pile of snakes, and she can turn anyone into stone with her gaze. Perseus, the son of Zeus, manages to behead her, but once he does, two children come out of her neck. Head doesn’t allude to the Greek myth, but the Medusa in Elizabeth’s world is as fearsome and willful as the Medusa in Greek mythology.

The narrator never attaches a proper name to Elizabeth’s son. Elizabeth calls him the “small boy,” and Mrs. Stanley refers to him as “Shorty.” The son symbolizes the innocence of children. He doesn’t judge his mom’s behavior. When she asks him if he’d like to die, he asks her to explain what death is. When she finds him sleeping on the floor, surrounded by burned items, he asks her what’s going on. His purity makes him unassuming and curious, and it reinforces Elizabeth’s belief that kids “generally lived apart, in a world all their own, outside adult passions” (144). There’s no evidence that the violent “passions” of Elizabeth’s adult, internal world traumatize the son. When she goes to the hospital for the first time, he likes staying with Eugene, his wife, and their son. When she goes to the hospital the second time, he likes living with Mrs. Stanley. As she’ll buy him anything and cook him what he wants, he wants to live with her permanently.

Kenosi and Tom are two of Elizabeth’s closest friends in Motabeng. Kenosi works alongside Elizabeth in the garden, and she’s reliable and insightful. Unlike Mrs. Jones, Kenosi “scented uncommon happenings behind that closed door” (172) and leaves Elizabeth alone when she’s battling her spiritual journey. Elizabeth never snaps at Kenosi, though she excoriates Tom, linking him to the Ku Klux Klan. Tom forgives Elizabeth and tries to visit her in the hospital.

Tom is 10 years younger than Elizabeth, and he’s an idealistic American who supports the Black Panthers and criticizes America’s vapid foreign policy. He, too, works in the garden, and he and Elizabeth have complex conversations about politics, God, morals, and her spiritual quest. Elizabeth tells Tom she loves him, but their relationship isn’t sexual or romantic. The same goes for Elizabeth’s relationship with Kenosi, though Elizabeth jokes about marrying her.