Action & Adventure—Rochester
CHAKA: READING NOTES (C1-5)
Fall 2022
BIG PICTURE QUESTIONS:
1. What’s Chaka’s initial character? For whom does he usually act or fight?
2. How do others feel about Chaka’s origins and conduct? What does this reveal about how politics and power work
in Mazulu?
3. Identify romance elements.
4. Identify the following monomyth elements:

Common Realm

Call to Adventure

Amulet

Threshold Crossing
KEY LINES & PASSAGES:
“an ox of the vultures”; “He is the cub of a lion; he is the nurseling of a wild beast . . . .” (6; 8)
“child of sin” (11)
Chaka’s initiation into fighting (12)
Chaka’s initial transformation (13-15)
The prophecy from the river (24)
“. . . Chaka, saviour of those in the grip of death, where all hope is lost!” (30)
“And it is here that we see clearly that Chaka had indeed become a hare-that-was-struck-on-the-ear, one-withoutparents, a buffalo-standing-all-by-itself, because all those who saw him fought him without any reason at all.” (33)
“He ran in earnest now, not simply running away from the sharpness of the spear, but determined to flee, to throw
himself away, to give himself to the plains, and go to a place where he would never again be seen, from where he
would never return. He ran until he entered the forest and hid himself there.” (34)
“. . . the fruit of sin is amazingly bitter . . . .The real issue, the cause of it all, was that Nandi and Senzangakhona
suffered from guilt.” (34)
C1
1. What is the opening political situation of Chaka’s people, the Mazulu? (3)
2. What are the circumstances of Chaka’s birth? (4-5)
3. What is Chaka’s opening description? What might it foreshadow about him? (6)
C2
1. Initially, how do others view Chaka as an infant? (7-8)
2. Why does Chaka’s life “take a turn for the worse”? (9-11)

How does Chaka begin to learn how to fight? (12)
3. What moment of transformation does Chaka undergo? (13-15)
C3
1. Describe Chaka’s conduct with the lion. (15-18)
2. How does the village react to Chaka’s heroic deed? (19-20)
C4
1. What’s the deal with the snake? (22-25)

What prophecy does it issue? (24)
2. What happens to Chaka’s reputation? (26)
C5
1. What’s important about Mfokazana’s and Chaka’s contrasting conduct regarding the hyena? (28-30)
2. Describe what happens to Chaka once Mfokazana sees him sitting on the dead hyena. (31-34)

What happens to Chaka’s relationship to the village?

Identify some epic gore. (32)
3. What moral does the narrator interject at the end of the chapter? (34)