Isak Dinesen: Out of Africa

 Word Count: 454

From Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

“Lulu has explained to her husband that there is nothing up by the houses to be afraid of but all the same he dares not come” (226).

“The years in which Lulu and her people came round to my house were the happiest of my life in Africa” (228).

“Lulu came in from the wild world to show that we were on good terms with it, and she made my house one with the African landscape, so that nobody could tell where the one stopped and the other began” (227).

In her memoir, Dinesen has a very strong connection with nature even more than humans. She is constantly referring to animals like humans. For example she calls the giant forest hog a “rare person to meet” (220). But most importantly she believed Lulu, an antelope she adopted, to be a part of her family, not unlike the way dogs are. However, like the hog she mentioned in the memoir, she refers to Lulu as if she was a human from Africa. She says that “Lulu was a young antelope of the bushbuck tribe” (220). Dinesen took care of Lulu as if she was her own child, even speaking to her character and how she responded like a child when she did not get what she wanted. However, Lulu was restless since she was in reality a wild animal and so eventually she left ‘without warning’. 

One of the people that worked for Dinesen began to leave food out for her and Lulu came back often for the food with her new antelope family. Dinesen described these days as the happiest of her days in Africa. Animals, especially Lulu and her dogs, were very important to her to the point where they were the highlight of her time in Africa. She claimed that Lulu had made her home one with the African landscape and I think that is what made her trip so impactful to her. The atmosphere Lulu created in her home created a way for Dinesen to embrace living in Africa in a new way. This life was probably more fulfilling for her because of how important animals and nature are to her. We can deduce that the culture she was immersed in also held this importance of animals and that may have spoken to her view of animals. This is shown when Kamante says, “Lulu has explained to her husband that there is nothing up by the houses to be afraid of but all the same he dares not come” (226). He also speaks of them as though they are humans with human conversations. This phenomenon may inform readers of how animals were treated and thought of in this section of Africa.