Ha'Penny Theme Essay

In Alan Paton’s Ha’Penny, is a story narrated by the principal of a reformatory for

boys in South Africa. It depicts how a young waif creates his own comforting reality in

contrast to his harsh life at the a lonely reformatory.


Reformatory by definition is: a penal institution for young offenders. This

immediately causes the reader to think of disobedience and prison, a cold and lonely

place. Reformatories in South Africa were mostly black and mixed children. Paton uses

language that reinforces this idea throughout the story such as, authority, coloured, the

State, and trouble. Although a reformatory in reality is a rehabilitation center that was

created in the 1860’s where the inmates are given productive activities to do and they are

treated on a more individual basis rather than a mass as prison does. Thus creating not

only a lonely environment but a somewhat hopeful environment of the boys going back
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