Background Apartheid—systematic racial segregation—was initiated in
South Africa in 1948 when Bessie Head was eleven years old. Under
apartheid’s rigid classification system, she was designated a “colored” person
and was denied the full privileges of citizenship in her homeland. Raised from
birth by a child welfare agency, she was later placed with foster parents. After
training in a missionary school, she worked as a teacher and journalist before
emigrating to Botswana, a neighboring country that was then under British
rule. Many of her writings explore the tragedies and injustices of South Africa
under apartheid rule.
The Prisoner
Who Wore Glasses
Short Story by Bessie Head
1. As you read lines 1–24, begin to collect and cite text
evidence.
• Underline language that describes the prisoner.
• Circle text that describes the warder.
• In the margin, summarize the descriptions.
S carcely a breath of wind disturbed the stillness of the day and the long
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company • Image Credits: ©Bill Cigliano; ©Zelfit/Shutterstock
rows of cabbages were bright green in the sunlight. Large white clouds
drifted slowly across the deep blue sky. Now and then they obscured the sun
and caused a chill on the backs of the prisoners who had to work all day
long in the cabbage field. This trick the clouds were playing with the sun
eventually caused one of the prisoners who wore glasses to stop work,
straighten up and peer short-sightedly at them. He was a thin little fellow
with a hollowed-out chest and comic knobbly knees. He also had a lot of
fanciful ideas because he smiled at the clouds.
10 “Perhaps they want me to send a message to the children,” he thought,
tenderly, noting that the clouds were drifting in the direction of his home
some hundred miles away. But before he could frame the message, the
warder in charge of his work span1 shouted: “Hey, what do you think you’re
doing, Brille?”
1
work span: a group or unit of workers.
29
The prisoner swung round, blinking rapidly, yet at the same time sizing
up the enemy. He was a new warder, named Jacobus Stephanus Hannetjie.
His eyes were the color of the sky but they were frightening. A simple,
primitive, brutal soul gazed out of them. The prisoner bent down quickly
and a message was quietly passed down the line: “We’re in for trouble this
20 time, comrades.”
“Why?” rippled back up the line.
“Because he’s not human,” the reply rippled down and yet only the
crunching of the spades as they turned over the earth disturbed the
stillness.
This particular work span was known as Span One. It was composed of
ten men and they were all political prisoners. They were grouped together
for convenience as it was one of the prison regulations that no black warder
should be in charge of a political prisoner lest this prisoner convert him to
his view. It never seemed to occur to the authorities that this very reasoning
30 was the strength of Span One and a clue to the strange terror they aroused
in the warders. As political prisoners they were unlike the other prisoners
in the sense that they felt no guilt nor were they outcasts of society. All
guilty men instinctively cower, which was why it was the kind of prison
where men got knocked out cold with a blow at the back of the head from
an iron bar. Up until the arrival of Warder Hannetjie, no warder had dared
beat any member of Span One and no warder had lasted more than a
2. Reread lines 12–20. State the conflict in your own words.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
__________________________________________________________________________________________
3. As you read lines 25–42, continue to cite textual evidence.
• Underline descriptions of Span One.
• Circle adjectives that describe why Span One is unique.
30
week with them. The battle was entirely psychological. Span One was
assertive and it was beyond the scope of white warders to handle assertive
black men. Thus, Span One had got out of control. They were the best
40 thieves and liars in the camp. They lived all day on raw cabbages. They
chatted and smoked tobacco. And since they moved, thought, and acted as
one, they had perfected every technique of group concealment.
Trouble began that very day between Span One and Warder Hannetjie.
It was because of the short-sightedness of Brille. That was the nickname he
was given in prison and is the Afrikaans2 word for someone who wears
glasses. Brille could never judge the approach of the prison gates and on
several occasions he had munched on cabbages and dropped them almost at
the feet of the warder and all previous warders had overlooked this. Not so
Warder Hannetjie.
50 “Who dropped that cabbage?” he thundered.
Brille stepped out of line.
“I did,” he said meekly.
“All right,” said Hannetjie. “The whole Span goes three meals off.”
“But I told you I did it,” Brille protested.
The blood rushed to Warder Hannetjie’s face.
“Look ‘ere,” he said. “I don’t take orders from a kaffir.3 I don’t know
2
Afrikaans: a South African language that developed from Dutch.
3
kaffir: a disparaging term for a black African.
4. Reread lines 25–42. How does the author foreshadow
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company • Image Credits: ©Zelfit/Shutterstock
trouble in the prison? Support your answer with explicit textual
evidence.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
5. As you read lines 43–102, continue to cite textual evidence.
• Underline the text that hints at racial conflict.
• Circle words that show a shift from the present to the past.
• In the margin of lines 73–94, explain what Brille remembers.
31
what kind of kaffir you think you are. Why don’t you say Baas. I’m your
Baas, Why don’t you say Baas, hey?”
Brille blinked his eyes rapidly but by contrast his voice was strangely
60 calm.
“I’m twenty years older than you,” he said. It was the first thing that
came to mind but the comrades seemed to think it a huge joke. A titter
swept up the line. The next thing Warder Hannetjie whipped out a
knobkerrie and gave Brille several blows about the head. What surprised his
comrades was the speed with which Brille had removed his glasses or else
they would have been smashed to pieces on the ground. That evening in the
cell Brille was very apologetic.
“I’m sorry, comrades,” he said. “I’ve put you into a hell of a mess.”
“Never mind, brother,” they said. “What happens to one of us, happens
70 to all.”
“I’ll try to make up for it, comrades,” he said. ‘‘I’ll steal something so
that you don’t go hungry.”
Privately, Brille was very philosophical about his head wounds. It was
the first time an act of violence had been perpetrated against him but he
had long been a witness of extreme, almost unbelievable human brutality.
He had twelve children and his mind traveled back that evening through
bedlam: the sixteen years of bedlam in which he had lived. It had all happened in a
small, drab little three-bedroomed house in a small, drab little street in the
Eastern Cape, and the children kept coming year after year because neither
80 he nor Martha ever managed the contraceptives the right way, and a
teacher’s salary never allowed moving to a bigger house, and he was always
taking exams to improve his salary only to have it all eaten up by hungry
mouths. Everything was pretty horrible, especially the way the children
fought. They’d get hold of each other’s heads and give them a good bashing
against the wall. Martha gave up somewhere along the line so they worked
out a thing between them. The bashings, biting and blood were to operate
in full swing until he came home. He was to be the bogeyman and when it
worked he never failed to have a sense of godhead at the way in which his
presence could change savages into fairly reasonable human beings.
90 Yet somehow it was this chaos and mismanagement at the center of his
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
life that drove him into politics. It was really an ordered, beautiful world
with just a few basic slogans to learn along with the rights of mankind. At
one stage, before things became very bad, there were conferences to attend,
all very far away from home.
32
“Let’s face it,” he thought ruefully. ‘‘I’m only learning right now what it
means to be a politician. All this while I’ve been running away from Martha
and the kids.”
And the pain in his head brought a hard lump to his throat. That was
what the children did to each other daily and Martha wasn’t managing and
100 if Warder Hannetjie had not interrupted him that morning he would have
sent the following message: “Be good comrades, my children. Cooperate,
then life will run smoothly.”
The next day Warder Hannetjie, caught this old man of twelve children
stealing grapes from the farm shed. They were an enormous quantity of
grapes in a ten-gallon tin and for this misdeed the old man spent a week in
the isolation cell. In fact, Span One as a whole was in constant trouble.
Warder Hannetjie seemed to have eyes at the back of his head. He
uncovered the trick about the cabbages, how they were split in two with the
spade and immediately covered with earth and then unearthed again and
110 eaten with split-second timing. He found out how tobacco smoke was
beaten into the ground and he found out how conversations were whispered
down the wind.
For about two weeks Span One lived in acute misery. The cabbages,
tobacco, and conversations had been the pivot of jail life to them. Then one pivot:
evening they noticed that their good old comrade who wore the glasses was
looking rather pleased with himself. He pulled out a four-ounce packet of
6. Reread the dialogue between Brille and Hannetjie (lines
50–62). From what you know about apartheid, make an inference about
why Brille stands up to Hannetjie.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
__________________________________________________________________________________________
7. As you read lines 103–138, continue to cite textual evidence.
• Underline the crimes Hannetjie uncovers.
• Circle the text that describes a turning point of the story.
• Underline text that refers to Brille as a father.
33
tobacco by way of explanation and the comrades fell upon it with great
greed. Brille merely smiled. After all, he was the father of many children.
But when the last shred had disappeared, it occurred to the comrades that
120 they ought to be puzzled. Someone said: “I say, brother. We’re watched like
hawks these days. Where did you get the tobacco?”
“Hannetjie gave it to me,” said Brille.
There was a long silence. Into it dropped a quiet bombshell.
“I saw Hannetjie in the shed today,” and the failing eyesight blinked
rapidly. “I caught him in the act of stealing five bags of fertilizer and he
bribed me to keep my mouth shut.”
There was another long silence.
“Prison is an evil life,” Brille continued, apparently discussing some
irrelevant matter. “It makes a man contemplate all kinds of evil deeds.”
130 He held out his hand and closed it.
“You know, comrades,” he said. ‘‘I’ve got Hannetjie. I’ll betray him
tomorrow.”
Everyone began talking at once.
“Forget it, brother. You’ll get shot.”
Brille laughed.
“I won’t,” he said. “That is what I mean about evil. I am a father of
children and I saw today that Hannetjie is just a child and stupidly truthful.
I’m going to punish him severely because we need a good warder.”
The following day, with Brille as witness, Hannetjie confessed to the
140 theft of the fertilizer and was fined a large sum of money. From then on
Span One did very much as they pleased while Warder Hannetjie stood by
and said nothing. But it was Brille who carried this to extremes. One day, at
8. Reread lines 113–138. Why does the author keep
mentioning Brille’s role as a father? Support your answer with explicit
textual evidence.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
9. As you read lines 139–183, underline text that describes how
life changes for Brille, Hannetjie, and Span One. In the margin, explain
how Brille betrays Hannetjie.
34
Brille looked at him,
for the first time struck
with pity, and guilt.
the close of work Warder Hannetjie said: “Brille, pick up my jacket and
carry it back to the camp.”
“But nothing in the regulations says I’m your servant, Hannetjie,” Brille
replied coolly.
‘‘I’ve told you not to call me Hannetjie. You must say Baas,” but Warder
Hannetjie’s voice lacked conviction. In turn, Brille squinted up at him.
“I’ll tell you something about this Baas business, Hannetjie,” he said.
150 “One of these days we are going to run the country. You are going to clean
my car. Now, I have a fifteen-year-old son and I’d die of shame if you had to
tell him that I ever called you Baas.”
Warder Hannetjie went red in the face and picked up his coat.
On another occasion Brille was seen to be walking about the prison
yard, openly smoking tobacco. On being taken before the prison
commander he claimed to have received the tobacco from Warder
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company • Image Credits: ©Zelfit/Shutterstock
Hannetjie. Throughout the tirade from his chief, Warder Hannetjie failed to
defend himself but his nerve broke completely. He called Brille to one side.
“Brille,” he said. “This thing between you and me must end. You may
160 not know it but I have a wife and children and you’re driving me to suicide.”
“Why don’t you like your own medicine, Hannetjie?” Brille asked
quietly.
“I can give you anything you want,” Warder Hannetjie said in
desperation.
“It’s not only me but the whole of Span One,” said Brille, cunningly.
“The whole of Span One wants something from you.”
Warder Hannetjie brightened with relief.
“I think I can manage if it’s tobacco you want,” he said.
Brille looked at him, for the first time struck with pity, and guilt.
35
170 He wondered if he had carried the whole business too far. The man was
really a child.
“It’s not tobacco we want, but you,” he said. “We want you on our side.
We want a good warder because without a good warder we won’t be able to
manage the long stretch ahead.”
Warder Hannetjie interpreted this request in his own fashion and his
interpretation of what was good and human often left the prisoners of Span
One speechless with surprise. He had a way of slipping off his revolver and
picking up a spade and digging alongside Span One. He had a way of
producing unheard of luxuries like boiled eggs from his farm nearby and
180 things like cigarettes, and Span One responded nobly and got the reputation
of being the best work span in the camp. And it wasn’t only take from their
side. They were awfully good at stealing certain commodities like fertilizer
which were needed on the farm of Warder Hannetjie.
10. Reread lines 170–183. With a small group,
analyze the parallels between Brille’s relationships with his twelve
children and his relationships with Hannetjie and Span One. Why did the
author choose to include Brille’s flashback about life with his wife and
children?
Short Response
Cite Text Evidence Head’s writing has been described as “having the
dimensions of a parable”—a short, simple story illustrating a moral or
spiritual truth. What simple truth does Head illustrate in “The Prisoner Who
Wore Glasses”? Why is it particularly meaningful given her cultural point of
view? Cite text evidence from the story.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
36