The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head: Summary, Themes and Questions
Quick answer: The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head: full summary with the ending, Dikeledi, Garesego and the Thebolos, themes of women and men in Botswana, plus exam questions.
A woman rides in the back of a police truck towards a life sentence in Gaborone, and discovers on her first night in prison that the other women in her cell have done exactly what she did. Bessie Head published The Collector of Treasures as the title story of her 1977 collection of Botswana village tales. At around 8,000 words it is the longest and most discussed story in the book.
The story in brief, ending included
Dikeledi Mokopi is taken to prison, where the wardress puts her with Kebonye and other women who murdered their husbands. The story then goes back. Dikeledi's husband Garesego left her years earlier with three small sons and no money, spending his wages on drink and other women. She survived by sewing, knitting, thatching and brewing beer, and found in her neighbours Paul and Kenalepe Thebolo the first real kindness of her life.
When her eldest son Banabothe qualifies for secondary school, Dikeledi needs money for fees and asks Garesego. He refuses, hears rumours that she is Paul's mistress, and announces that he will return to the house to reassert his rights and to be fed and bathed like a husband. Dikeledi prepares a meal, heats the bath water. When he has eaten and lies down, she takes a kitchen knife and cuts off his genitals, and he bleeds to death. She sends for the police. Paul Thebolo arrives and tells her he will take her sons into his home. The story closes back in the prison, where Dikeledi, sentenced for life, begins knitting and sewing for the other women and the wardresses, collecting treasures where she is.
Who is who
A village divided into two kinds of men and the woman between them.
Themes and meaning
Exam readings: the position of women in post-independence Botswana, the two kinds of men Head describes in a long authorial passage (one who takes and one who gives), colonialism's damage to family life, and female solidarity. The prison cell full of women who killed the same way is the story's argument that Dikeledi's act is social, not individual.
The sharper observation is that the story treats the murder as an act of housekeeping. Dikeledi cooks, heats water and tidies before she kills, and Head's calm description refuses to let the reader recoil into horror; the horror is meant to attach to the years before.
The craft: starting at the end
Head opens in the police truck and the cell, so the murder is known before the marriage is described. The technique to steal is telling the reader the outcome first and making the story about how a gentle person arrives there; suspense becomes comprehension. The device of a second, good marriage next door to the bad one is a structural lesson: give your protagonist a visible alternative so that her choice measures against something.
For class and essays
Questions with two-line answers, then terms and one misreading.
What writers can take from this
- Structure an essay around the two kinds of men, but anchor each claim in a specific scene rather than the essay passage.
- Cite the domestic preparations before the killing as evidence of Head's tone.
- Use the prison frame to argue that Dikeledi's act is presented as common, not exceptional.
- For writers, open with the consequence and spend the story earning it.
- Place a working alternative beside your protagonist's disaster; contrast does what commentary cannot.
Try it yourself
Write a story that opens with your protagonist already being punished for an act the reader has not yet seen. Go back and show the years that led to it without excusing it, give her a neighbour whose life shows what hers could have been, and return to the punishment at the end with her doing what she has always done.
Questions
What happens at the end of The Collector of Treasures?
Dikeledi kills Garesego by cutting off his genitals after he returns to demand his rights as a husband, then sends for the police. Paul Thebolo promises to raise her sons. Sentenced for life, she begins knitting and sewing for the women in prison.
What is the theme of The Collector of Treasures?
The position of women in Botswana village society, the two kinds of men Head describes, the damage done to family life by colonialism and migrant labour, and the solidarity of women who have suffered the same thing.
Why does Dikeledi kill Garesego?
After years of abandonment he refuses to pay their son's school fees and announces he will return to be fed, bathed and served as a husband. She prepares everything he demands and then kills him.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
Enter a Writory story contest
Enter the Writory Short Story Contest and have your own story read and scored out of 100. Entries close 25 November. That first entry makes you a Writorian.