She can "smell his fetid breath," just as she can see how the society around her is rotting from the inside out. Magda recognizes her plight here, if she "[goes] on running [she] will only perish more ignominiously." Her attempt to escape the society surrounding her will only result in her own isolation and the loss of what dignity she has when her "neck is broken, if it is a merciful beast, or until [her] bowels are clawed out, if it is not." (49).  Society is an ideological enemy for Magda, and thus one she cannot fight directly against. To create a conquerable enemy Magda pictures her father in place of the "beast" or monster from her imaginings. Her supposed triumph comes from succeeding, once in dream and once, presumably, in reality, in killing her father. Her personification of society does not limit itself to her father, as the patriarchal aspect of her society is not the only one she cannot tolerate.
	Magda is also uncomfortable enduring the use of slavery in South African society, she finds it easy to order the slaves around, and cannot succeed in breaking the language barrier between them. Thus, she also wonders if Hendrik is "the beast, the insulted husband, the serf trodden under his master's boot, rising to roar for vengeance" (49). Magda's picture of Hendrik is contradictory, she feels as though he is "[looming]" around the farm, but she imagines him "playing his mouthorgan in the shade of a tree" (49).  She sees Hendrik as both a threat and a possible ally; if she could overcome the language barrier between them then she would be able to communicate her own dissatisfaction with the system. Magda cannot do this, and thus is afraid of Hendrik, and the system he represents.
	Magda herself is uncomfortable with sexuality, she doesn’t understand her own and sees, or imagines, that of others to be gluttonous, or even threatening. She feels it is the fault of the society she lives in that she is limited this way; that this society is stifling and exploitive. Magda moves on to wonder if Anna is "the beast, the woman, subtle, lascivious, insatiable?" Her apparent powerlessness to stop, block or overcome any of them causes Magda imagine their 'victory,' how her father rules the house with Anna, while "Hendrik tipples…and the work of generations falls to ruins." (49). Her vision here ends with Hendrik and Anna conspiring against her father, and at its close a strange festival, with "the old master [sitting] like an idiot on the stoop smiling and nodding, president of the festival." (49-50). Magda's fear of sexuality in other women and herself leads to a fear of herself, she comes to the conclusion that the only one left to imagine as the beast is herself.  
	In the very first line of the next section Magda wonders, "Who is the beast among us?" (50). 