“Sponono,” by Alan Paton, is about a boy who attends a reformatory school in South Africa. Sponono, a member of the Xhosa tribe, has a very different cultural background than those who run the school. The reader first sees Sponono when he asks to speak the principal in order to defend and protect a fellow student. Johannes, an older reformatory student had stolen a watch and was likely to be expelled from the school and then imprisoned. Sponono, realizing the Principal may choose Johannes fate, tries to persuade the principal to offer the boy another chance. Sponono argues that since the goal of the school is to reform the boys (it is, after all, a “REFORMatory”), sending Johannes to prison would in fact make him more of a criminal. Johannes himself states: “‘I am learning,’ he said, ‘but not yet enough. If I come back here, I shall learn completely. But if I go to prison, I shall learn to steal more than before’” (53). The principal is persuaded and agrees to give Johannes another chance. This early look at how reformation works sets the tone for the reader’s understanding of Sponono’s reform attempts later in the story. Throughout the rest of the story, Sponono makes mistake after mistake. He steals and he gets in fights, but each time he misbehaves, he expects to be forgiven. The Principal grows weary of this tomfoolery and is not as keen to repeat this cycle of constant forgiveness. The principal and him, have very different ideas about forgiveness. Sponono, in spite of his faults and mistakes, honestly wants to reform.
Sponono had listened carefully to his catechism lessons and liked Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness: “Jesus said that we must forgive those who offend against us, even unto seventy times seven” (61). The principal though, seems to base his ideas about forgiveness more on the Old Testament teaching about “an eye for an eye.” The principal feels that Sponono must be punished in some way for his mistakes/crimes. Sponono sees his actions as mistakes on the road to reforming and the Principal sees them as crimes and signs that Sponono will never reform. The Principal wants to punish rather than forgive because he thinks that will be a more effective way to reform Sponono. Sponono though, doesn’t see the purpose of the punishment. He thinks he just needs to be genuinely sorry for what he has done. Sponono and the Principal both take the idea of reform fairly literally. The word “re-form,” literally means to form yourself again. The Principal thinks that can only be done through punishment. Sponono thinks that being sorry is the way to re-make your ideals. The Principal works with hundreds of boys in the reformatory and he wants the punishments to deter others from misbehaving. Sponono doesn’t understand how deterrence relates to reforming himself or others. Sponono also doesn’t see how retribution helps. He does give back the money he stole from the couple, thinking that it is right to compensate a victim’s loss. He just doesn’t see how revenge or deterrence help a sinner reform. After Sponono steals from the couple, he doesn’t understand why he can’t still work in the Principal’s garden. He feels that he made amends and was sorry, so he doesn’t see what his punishment will accomplish. Sponono applies these ideas to others. He wants forgiveness for Johannes and when Tembo injures his eye, he doesn’t ask for “an eye for an eye,” he forgives him: “He did not mean to hurt my eye. I might have hurt his eye too, if he had not hurt mine first. It was his bad luck, meneer” (60). The one thing he can’t forgive is his Principal’s inability to forgive him:
“Are you then like other people, who, when a man has done wrong, treat him badly? I have always looked upon you as a trustworthy, but now I am ashamed… Why have you turned? You were always a man of your word, but now you are changed.”
This seems to contradict what Sponono says about forgiveness, but maybe that’s the author’s point. Like Penelope Lively, maybe Paton too doesn’t want to give easy answers. He wants to leave things ambiguous.
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