Language: A Social and Political Tool?

In perusing the seven folders of artifacts by Nadine Gordimer, I uncovered a piece of her life, a small peephole into what this woman was like. In Box 4 Folder 21 there are a number of works from her childhood, specifically from age 13, that gave me a sense of just how talented Gordimer really was. At 13 she published a poem, “Spring,” and a short story, “The Valley Legend” in the Sunday Express. Also, in a journal-like assignment, 13 year old Gordimer enumerates every book she has read that year, totaling 41, her favorite being, “Gone with the Wind.” This is an intense book for a young child to fully appreciate, but in her journal she seems to grasp at least some of the deeper messages within the book. So as a 13 year old she is already showing great promise for the future.

The next folder, 22, holds a play Gordimer wrote, “The First Circle,” probably performed around 1944, making her at most 19 at the time she wrote it. This particular play is the window to the rest of Gordimer’s following writings; it introduces her call to political action and her interest in the situation in South Africa. After reading the play in its entirety, I think it would be incredibly beneficial to perhaps research what was actually occurring in the social and political spheres in South Africa at the time she wrote this and then go back and read the play again to see if any of the characters actually embody any real persons in particular. However, even without having any prior knowledge to the situation in South Africa, Gordimer makes it clear that no one party can be blamed in entirely for the situation.

The structure of the play is essentially an updated 2oth century version of Dante and Virgil’s tour of hell, specifically limited to the first circle in which the two travelers encounter a handful of characters that all are in some way sinners that lent to the injustice of the situation in South Africa. Without going into too much detail about each person’s individual sins, it is easier to say that they all committed sins of apathy; it was a lack of appropriate action or blind eye to the situation that reserved them a place in the first circle of hell. She specifically uses Shakespeare to illustrate this theme. Dante says, “Neither good nor evil, did they take part. – Then they have done nothing master?” Virgil answers, “Nothing. And nothing will come of nothing.” Essentially Gordimer crafted the play as a criticism of every person’s, both the oppressed and the oppressor’s, apathetic attitude towards the need for political and social change in South Africa.

In Folder 24 an essay, “Why it is Not Satisfactory to Say that the Function of Language is ‘to Communicate Thought,’” Gordimer argues “the function of language is entirely subordinate to another function: the expression of pain, surprise, and protest; the release of my feelings. In fact what is summed up more technically as ‘emotive function’” (1). She essentially argues that language is more than just a straight-forward tool of communication, and that it is actually the medium through which to express emotion. I think in further research it would be interesting to read a little more into the essay and see if any of the points of her argument could be applied to her play. Perhaps she chose to write a play about South Africa instead of a discourse because of the way she feels language should be used?

Folder 25 contains a number of “odd stories” by Gordimer, and after a brief scan I randomly chose to read one titled, “Hero,” in which a mother takes her son to the Lincoln Memorial. The story refers to “years of darkness” and this “flame” that a mosquito, which I believe represents Lincoln, circles until the end of the “years of darkness.” In further research I would like to try and identify what those “years of darkness” refer to, and perhaps delve further into her analogy of Lincoln as a mosquito.

Folder 29 contains her essay on the “African Emergent,” which uncovers one particular issue in South Africa that Gordimer clearly takes great issue with, that of the issue of black vs. white. Folder 32 contains her essay, “After Apartheid: Black and White in a New South Africa,” which further illustrates her concern with the issue of race. Also in Folder 32 is Gordimer’s address to the Olso Conference in 1990 in which she has great hope that the, “Law in South Africa will outlaw all racism.” She uses a poem by Mongane Serote in her address which deals with the hope for New South Africa. This again prompts me to wonder whether further research about Gordimer’s views on language can help lend more light onto why she uses poetry and playwriting to make political commentary. Folder 38 appropriate concludes this survey of her writing with the essay, “Africa: Ordeal by Color APARTHEID.” In her own words she connects her social concern to her own personal life, which I believe would be interesting to further research her biography to see how she became to personally involved in South Africa.

“My own friends among Africans are people I happen to like, my kind of people, whose friendship I am not prepared to forgo because of some racial theory I find meaningless and absurd. Like that of many others, my opposition to apartheid is compounded not only out of a sense of justice but also out of a person, selfish and extreme distaste for having the choice of my friends dictated to me, and the range of human intercourse proscribed for me.”