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In Alan Paton’s Ha’Penny, is a story narrated by the principal of a reformatory for boys in South Africa. It depicts how a young waif creates his own comforting reality in contrast to his harsh life at the a lonely reformatory. Reformatory by definition is: a penal institution for young offenders. This immediately causes the reader to think of disobedience and prison, a cold and lonely place. Reformatories in South Africa were mostly black and mixed children. Paton uses language that reinforces this idea throughout the story such as, authority, coloured, the State, and trouble. Although a reformatory in reality is a rehabilitation center that was created in the 1860’s where the inmates are given productive activities to do and they are treated on a more individual basis rather than a mass as prison does.
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