The Promise

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Pages 1-44

Part 1, Pages 45-89

Part 2, Pages 93-130

Part 2, Pages 130-151

Part 3, Pages 155-176

Part 3, Pages 177-192

Part 3, Pages 192-215

Part 4, Pages 219-232

Part 4, Pages 232-257

Part 4, Pages 257-269

Background

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3, Pages 155-176Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Astrid”

Part 3, Pages 155-166 Summary

Another interval of nine years passes; Part 3 begins in 2004, and all three Swart children have again undergone significant life changes. Amor is in a relationship with Susan, the woman she told Anton and Astrid she was going to move in with, and is working as a nurse in an AIDS ward.

One night, Amor receives a call from an excited Astrid, who wants to tell her about President Mbeki’s inauguration. Astrid managed to secure an invitation to this important event because she is now divorced from Dean and married to Jake Moody, the man she was having an affair with in Part 2. Jake’s business partner is a powerful politician. Amor is disinterested in the phone call because she sees President Mbeki as the man who is ignoring the AIDS crisis and therefore making her job harder.

After the phone call, Astrid goes to her Catholic priest to confess her sins; like her mother, she has converted to a different religion for the sake of her husband. In the confessional, she admits to Father Batty that she is having an affair with Jake’s partner, saying she would not have considered doing this years ago because he is a Black man, but the changing tides of the country have made her more accepting of the idea.

Father Batty is frustrated that she thinks she can do whatever she wants if she confesses it afterward, rather than truly repenting and changing. He turns her away without absolution, telling her he will not grant it until she ends the affair.

Astrid goes to the mall and feels better after making several purchases. When she gets in her car to drive home, however, a man is in the passenger’s seat pointing a gun at her. The man is a professional carjacker: He forces her into the trunk of the car, drives to an abandoned drive-in theater, orders her out of the car, and kills her.

Part 3, Pages 166-176 Summary

An old man who lives in the abandoned cashier’s office finds Astrid’s body. Two detectives, Olyphant and Hunter, arrive on the scene and call both Jake and Anton to the police station to answer some questions and identify the body.

Anton offers to drive Jake home, but Jake requests that they stop at Father Batty’s church first. When Father Batty hears of Astrid’s death, he feels uncomfortable thinking about his denial of absolution. He accidentally lets slip to Jake that she confessed a sin when she saw him. He also admits, at Jake’s insistence, that he did not absolve her.

Although Jake appears dazed and disturbed on the ride home, Anton is busy thinking of himself; he wants to ask for Jake’s help installing extra security measures on the farm to protect against increased crime rates. Unrest has been growing in the country, and Anton fears “intruders on the land” (176).

Part 3, Pages 155-176 Analysis

Throughout the novel, Astrid’s primary characteristics are her selfishness and shallowness. As she ages, experiencing motherhood and multiple marriages, these characteristics do not subside. As she hurts those around her, she also hurts herself; Astrid’s relentless focus on her wants and her social status impedes her happiness. Because she is unwilling to examine herself and ask why she is restless in her marriages, she continues the pattern of having secret affairs, only to find they do not bring lasting satisfaction. When forced to confront this selfishness by Father Batty, she takes refuge in materialism, using retail therapy to block her troubled conscience. Although she dies before she can make a true confession and reform her behavior, nothing about her lifelong pattern of behavior suggests that she ever would have taken Batty’s recommendation.

The manner of Astrid’s death draws attention to Galgut’s continuous motif of repetition and cycles. While Part 2 ended with the high of South Africa’s World Cup win and Mandela’s inspiring presidential presence, Part 3 opens with a new president who is ignoring the AIDS crisis while crime rates creep back up. Tellingly, Astrid is unaware of these subtle shifts, thinking that her own willingness to have a sexual relationship with a Black man is evidence that the country is on an ever-expanding track toward harmony.

The novel’s historical setting continues to foreground The Difficulty of Addressing Past Injustices. In 2004, it is 10 years since Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black, democratically elected president. The current president is Thabo Mbeki of the ANC, who succeeded Mandela in 1999 and is now serving his second term. Amor’s character arc highlights one of the difficulties of Mbeki’s presidency, which was his inadequate handling of the country’s AIDS epidemic. Official denial, pervasive poverty, lack of sanitation, and lack of medical resources such as antiretroviral treatments made it impossible to curb the spread of the virus, which disproportionately affected poor, Black South Africans. The race- and class-based poverty Black South Africans faced at this time was a legacy of apartheid. While Mbeki’s government focused on economic development and attracting foreign investment, ordinary South Africans suffered from high unemployment rates and poor living conditions. The country’s focus on materialism at the expense of keeping its promises of equality and economic stability to Black South Africans mirrors the family’s continued denial of keeping Rachel’s promise to Salome and enriches the novel’s exploration of Cynicism Toward Institutions.