For this first phase at the Lilly Library, I decided to cover the papers of Nadine Gordimer. Gordimer was born in 1923 in a small town in South Africa. She has lived her whole life in the country and coped with the apartheid set by South African government in 1948. Apartheid literally means separateness and was a legal system to enforced racial segregation. It was similar to the racial segregation in America but much stricter for both sides. The apartheid lasted until 1993. Nadine Gordimer was one of the main writers and public figures to step out against the apartheid. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for literature. She is now very active in HIV/AIDS causes.
There are seven total folders of her work at the Lilly Library and each gives an insight into different times of her life and the different ways she expresses herself through writing. I have numbered the folders in which they were arranged in the box they came in.
Folder one contains “After Apartheid: Black and White in a New South Africa” address to the Oslo Conference, Aug 1990. This was a speech Gordimer gave to the members of the Oslo Conference against the apartheid. In this speech, she expresses not only how it hurts the country now but also how the fear and hate will leave emotional scars that could never heal. One of the most poignant things I thought she said was, “I am white but I owe no particular loyalty or solidarity to being white; I feel my respect is to human beings.” I think this is an interesting thought because so many people put emphasis on skin color but she just wants to help everyone and does not see a difference. It kind of reminds me of Elizabeth when she talks about how she has the heart of a king. Although she is a woman she sees both sides and wants to purely do what is right for her people. I also thought this speech was interesting because three years later the apartheid was dissolved.
Folder two contains an actual magazine article called “Africa: Ordeal By Color, Apartheid”. It was published in April 1959. This article is intriguing right away because she starts off with the literal definition and then talks about how different people would have different takes on the apartheid. She says that a white man might say, “It is a means of keeping South Africa white” but a black man’s answer would depend on the kind of day he was having and how the apartheid affected him that day. She goes on to tell so really interesting true stories from her life about how she was affected too. She talks about a wedding that she had to leave because it was a black friend’s wedding. She also tells about the time when she wanted to eat lunch with her black friend at the airport and she couldn’t even do that without security coming to break them up. I thought these stories were really compelling because even she was not permitted to do things or go certain places because of the situation. It really shows how it controlled everyone’s lives and not just people of color.
Folder three had the first stories that Gordimer ever published. She was thirteen when her first story “The Quest for Seen Gold” was published in a local newspaper, in 1937. The story is about a little girl who tries to capture the sun. It was an interesting story and showed just how talented she was at a very young age. There was also a newspaper clipping of a poem called “Spring”. I assume it comes from around the same time.
The fourth folder contained the most interesting piece of Gordimer’s works, at least to me. It was a play she had written in 1944 called The First Circle. The play was a more modern take on a chapter of “Dante’s Inferno”, one of the three books of “The Divine Comedy”. The play has many characters and a lot of great voices throughout. There is a main lesson to be taken from the play which is that people who stand by and do nothing is just as much of a misdeed as actually doing something wrong. Although this is written before the apartheid is actually instated, I assume that there was a lot of tension between the two types of people at this time. I think she was trying to reach out with this play and make a call to action. I think she was trying to tell people that they needed to help out and not just turn a blind eye to bad situations. This play shows how creative she was by intersecting this idea with a story as popular as “Dante’s Inferno”.
Folder five contains a short story, “African Emergent”. I think that the story is told from the perspective of a white man who is friends with a jailed black man. I believe he is telling his friend’s story but I only skimmed a little of it because it was pretty long.
Gordimer’s essay “Why it is not Satisfactory to Say that the Function of Language is ‘to Communicate Thought’” is in folder six. It was published in March of 1946. In scanning the first couple of pages of the long essay, I thought that she was building an argument for what else language does beside communicate thought or how thought can be communicated in other ways. There are also two other untitled essays in the folder.
Folder seven is the thickest of the all the other folders. It contains nine short stories all written before 1950. Like Emily, the only one I actually read was “The Hero” but did not really understand the point she was trying to make with the story. Later in this research, I would like to take the time to read some of these stories to see more themes that she covers.
I had never heard of Nadine Gordimer when I first started this process and honestly I picked her works at random. But I’m glad that I got to look into some of her work because I think she is a fascinating and talented writer and person. I look forward to learning more about her and the apartheid in South Africa.
4 comments:
Britt,
I found a lot of this to be very compelling work looking into Gordimer’s life and works. The background that you provide about Gordimer is very helpful in the beginning—especially the definition that you provide about apartheid. I felt like you were taking some of the beneficial aspects of the symposium (specifically the critical definitions) and applying it to your work. I thought your analysis of the texts was a good preliminary look into Gordimer’s thoughts and ideals. Because I am doing Hapgood, I feel like there is a sense of overlap in some of the main motives and whatnot. For example, both authors are writing to stir the masses and provoke a change in the way that things are going. Because of this relation that I see, I just have a few questions and comments that your post drew to my mind.
“After Apartheid” sounds like quite an emotional and moving speech. I drew a lot of similarities between it and some of Hapgood’s works. Because it is so powerful, maybe you could expound upon just how she really works to appeal to pathos, and perhaps even logos, as she gives delivers to her audience. It might even be beneficial to look at audience construction here. You do mention a relation to Elizabeth, and our discussion in class led to a lot of talk about just how she uses audience construction to really drive her points home. This might be something that can advance your views on Gordimer just a little further.
I could really relate to your analysis of folder three and the inclusion of “Quest for Seen Gold” because Hapgood wrote a few pieces of short fiction as well. While these can be challenging and make you think “why on earth is this in here?” I think a lot can be drawn out of it. While this story was in her youth, what ideals do you see present in Gordimer at this young age? Is there anything that relates to her views on apartheid that she will demonstrate in her later life?
Finally, I thought that your identification of the major theme in The First Circle was very effective. It clearly summed everything up nicely and showed just what the work’s main goal was. Because this play is such a call to action, how does she do this? Is it through some techniques that we have seen already? For example, I could maybe see her using some appeals to time in order to truly rally up her audience and make them want the change that she advocates. We have studied and gone into quite a few persuasive techniques and observed them in action in many writings, how can you apply those to this play?
Good phase one work! You clearly aroused my interest in a topic that I had originally thought I would not find too interesting. I look forward to seeing your archival project progress.
Britt,
I am not familiar with Gordimer, but from what you have found it seems like through analyzing her take on the experiences she had you could really flesh out a theory relating to segregation and/or apartheid. I wonder what other connections you could make between the two, and whether or not the US civil rights movement had any influence on apartheid in Africa?
For me, the most interesting topic you touched on was “Why it is not Satisfactory to Say that the Function of Language is ‘to Communicate Thought’” because I think it could provide a good critical lens for other works you may come across. It seems like throughout this course the dens articles on use of language and rhetoric have proven to be ones we reference the most (like Ong, for example).
Overall I think you did a great job of succinctly explaining the pieces you looked at and are able to make significant claims about the subject. I will be interested to see if you decide to focus on a few of her works or try to find general trends or themes connecting a span of works. I think either route could prove to be a good paper.
Best of luck!
I have read one novel by Gordimer,on of her most recent, entitled The Pickup. Unfortunately, while it does deal with race and its social significance, it does not discuss Apartheid. She is an interesting writer and humanitarian, something which is evidenced in her writing.
I think you have a real advantage, if you decide to stick with the Gordimer collection, in that you have a veriety of genres to choose from: biographical information, stories, excerpts, documents, etc. It should be interesting to dig deeper into.
Some of the things you wrote about Gordimer in the first folder on the Oslo Conference reminds me of many of the readings we've looked at in the second sphere. In particular, I am reminded of the themes involving the negative effects the oppression of women has on society and politics. Also, the comparison of a woman's status in society (and resulting psyche) to that of a slave is recycled here.
What I was really, really excited about in reading your post, though, was the fourth folder, The First Circle. This sounds so intriguing to me. I really love The Divine Comedy and I would be very interested to read this text. I also think that the significance of this piece, the harmfulness of inaction, is applicable to everything we have studied so far. Most all we have studied, from the polemics to the essays to the short fictions, involves a call to action or its considration, at the very least. If you used this general idea as a foundation and incorporate some of the other Gordimer works I think you could havea really interesting and profound paper!
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