so Viviers, a young teacher at his school) where he went wrong. Johan thinks that he can change the world- the very thing that Phil Bruwer warned him against. Ben does not want his son to make the same mistakes that he made. He even says to himself at one point in the novel, There was something both terrifying and reassuring in the knowledge of the closeness of his son (Brink 75). This single quote sums up his relationship with his son (and at the same time, with himself) very well.The end of the movie certainly takes away from many of the things that Brink worked so hard to set up in his novel. In the movie, Johan helps his father to get the information that was collected published in the newspaper. This it leaves the typical audience member with not only a sense of finality, but also a sense that everything is going to turn out okay in the end. The book purposefully does neither of these things. In the book, the narrator informs us that Ben was killed when he was on his way to mail the narrator the documents. The narrator then poses the question: How could the reporter have known it, unless Ben still had the letter with him when it happened? And if he had, then who had posted it afterwards (Brink 315)? He then tells the reader that the documents reached him a week after they were mailed. The reader is left questioning whether or not the Security Police know about his possession of the documents. This is yet another method that Brink uses to leave it up to the reader, who is now in the same situation that the narrator was in at the beginning of the story. Because were unsure about what is to happen with the narrator, it is our job to carry it on- the narrator has delivered us our information, and it is in our hands. Many other differences are present between the novel and the movie version of A Dry White Season, and one could go on about them all day. But they all come down to the same facts: both Brink and Palcy had re...
