The Divided House

With this short story by Alan Paton, we have a glimpse into the author’s real-world duties and responsibilities as the Principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory in South Africa.
This moral tale presents us with a boy who has been placed by the state in a reformatory after having been caught committing a criminal offense. The speaker of the story, a principal, relates how he allows this boy a measure of freedom after he begins demonstrating talent on the sports field, leadership amongst his peers, and industriousness in his trade workshop.
Until one day, the boy uses the freedoms granted to him to escape back into a life of crime and the principal, by chance, finds him in a hospital. He is given a second chance, and especially due to the fact that the boy relates how he received a calling from God, to become a priest.
And then he is given a third chance. And a fourth. Until the matter is no longer in the principal’s hands to decide, but we as readers must also decide, for Alan Paton in the subtext of this story is asking us to consider what working with those who live with a Divided House, means to our own.