This may be a difficult chapter. It is a commentary on the detail of what the Gnau do in the rites of puberty. I am concerned with the responses and understanding of ordinary Gnau people and not solely those most expert or articulate about them. Their responses vary and the meanings that they find for what they do change with age and experience. Their style of ritual is not one that leads to conspicuously explicit or fixed interpretations.

One dominant theme informs the meaning given to the rites: the rites are done for the growth and successful development of the individual. Various clusters of associated ideas are set about this theme. In the first part of the chapter I shall explore some reasons for the variations in the people's responses and comments on the meaning of the rites. I seek to show how these responses depend both on their knowledge of things outside the situation of the ritual performance, and on attributes intrinsic to the conduct and patterning of the rites. I distinguish responses dependent on connection within the ritual performance itself from ones extrinsic to it. Certain motifs in the puberty rites recur in other rites. By recurring they point to connections between the rites. Responses to the motifs change with experience of them. The understanding of why they are done and of what they mean is revised, changed and expanded in the light of later knowledge and experience.