The Jack Bank's struggle is not so much a self-discovery as a journey in spite of it. Glen Retief writes from a world of racial, political, religious, and sexual oppression, a world that inspires discrimination through violence. As a gay man, Retief is unable to free himself from this cycle. The discovery of his sexuality, discovered by most of his childhood friends during rugby and war games, was kept hidden from him. In his memoir essay “The Castle,” Retief constructs a metaphor of the dormitory in which he is housed for his first year at the University of Cape Town. In the castle, Retief's discoveries collide. It is the first time he is free from John's perverse hazing and his mother's Catholicism, open to self-exploration. But it is also the first time he has come into contact with the minorities that the South African government has oppressed for so long. It's the first time he's been given the opportunity to engage with "non-whites as equals," a new chance to explore the other side of Jack Bank and forge a new identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Given the walls of his new castle, both mental and physical, Retief takes the gift of distance from John and his Jack Bank and uses it as a modem to understand and internalize the meaning of the beatings. The memory of Jack Bank fills him with “disgusting terror” but also with a confused “exhilarating eroticism”. This understanding only leads to further doubts, confuses his sense of courage and cowardice, and sparks the beginnings of his homosexuality. The castle, his college dormitory, became the site of his new identity, a place where he could explore himself in search of discovery. His first challenge in the castle comes with his jock roommate, Bill, a guy who lounges naked and beats up gay men who hit on them at the bar. After Bill's fight, the words "queer" and "sick poofter" got stuck in his head. He revisits the cycle of violence that Jack Bank has created in the future, the fear that one day he too will “strike the weak” to make himself feel better. This presents Retief with a new need to bury his identity, to prevent self-discovery. The alienation suffered in Krugar National Park due to its perception of difference, its preference for the Lord of the Rings and non-violent sports such as tennis over rugby and war, is renewed among white Cape Town. Here he is surrounded by rich white people, who ask him what he thinks of Venice or Paris, if he likes caviar, how much he has travelled. Being a student at the University solely on his own merit and not because of his money, Retief finds little in common with them. Its differences are widened. This isolation pushes him further into himself, with the presumption of dragging the discovery. Yet, from here Retief meets Aubery and his journey of self-understanding is misdirected. Living in D-flat, the segregated residence for blacks, he meets Aubery, a student who asks him the most important question of his life: "you really don't understand yourself, do you?" This is indeed the fact that dominated the tension about his sexuality, but here the racial importance in The Jack Bank becomes significant for Retief's discovery. He identifies with the "bogeyman", with Aubery and his cronies. Retief thinks back to John's abuse, remembers how John called him "a waste of white skin," and takes on the black identity, realizing that this is the reason for his difference and not his sexuality. He thought it wasn't being “an English boy in an Afrikaans village” or a “country boy in the city”, it was a new and different value system that set him apart from his culture. In a way, it had.