Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

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Question 3: What are the meanings and morals in Out of Africa?

Q. I am a student studying the text Out of Africa written by Karen Blixen and in search for some information about the book. Such information on the meanings and morals on why she wrote it would be very helpful to my studies.

A. The best resource for interpretation of Isak Dinesen's writings is Robert Langbaum's "Isak Dinesen's Art: The Gayety of Vision."

You will find that he describes "Out of Africa" as a prose pastoral--an idealized vision of rural life. The story describes a paradise lost, or a fall from the Garden of Eden.

Karen Blixen believed that humans achieve their greatest potential in the face of tragedy. Without tragedy lives are mundane and soon forgotten. But a tragedy can highlight a life, render the victim heroic, and preserve the life in the historical record, ie in myth. Tragedy should therefore be embraced as an opportunity to fulfill one's greatest destiny.