Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

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Question 19: Denys's movie gifts to Karen Blixen?

Q. What gifts does Denys Finch Hatton give to Karen Blixen in the movie Out of Africa?

A. In the movie Denys gives Karen a compass and a gold pen.

The compass is a mistaken comment upon Karen Blixen's life because it implies that Karen Blixen (ie. the woman in this Hollywood interpretation) couldn't find her way through life without Finch Hatton's (a man's) help. This is untrue of the real Karen Blixen by virtue of the great success of her literary life.

The gold pen implies that she needed Denys's direction and encouragement to begin writing--a wrongful interpretation of Karen Blixen's life, for she began writing as a child.

In real life, it was Denys Finch Hatton who was directionless. Karen Blixen points this out in Out of Africa, and more subtly in a story, "The Dreamers," where she describes a character, Lincoln Forsner, who, she told a friend, represents Denys: "You dream awake and walking about. You will do nothing yourself to choose your own ways...You let the waves of fate wash you about" (SGT 277). (Isak Dinesen talks in Out of Africa about Finch Hatton's "moods and forebodings", and his tendency to avoid decisions. When she was preparing to leave Africa, she had to sell the furniture out from under him before he found himself another place to live.)

Copyright © 2001 by Linda Donelson MD. All rights reserved