Gordimer: Political Activist and Literary Master

At an early age, Nadine Gordimer began writing short stories and plays, her first being "The Valley Legend" published in the Sunday Express when she was thirteen years old. This already suggests Gordimer's literary ability, which makes it highly plausible that her later works would be written by a highly skilled, matured writer who knew how to use allegory, metaphor, and direct characterization to work to her advantage.

One such example of this would be her short story "Hero," written sometime before 1950. The story essentially recounts a scene where a mother has brought her very young son to see the Lincoln Memorial and she is trying to explain why Lincoln was such a hero for America. In doing so, she explains with a metaphor that Lincoln was the moth who never strayed from the light, staying with the burnt-out lamp for six years before leaving it to become a hero sooner. This metaphor is problematic, because usually moths are attracted to light, so why should this particular moth be esteemed for acting abnormally? Also, light is traditionally a symbol or metaphor for enlightenment or knowledge or goodness, so why did it take this moth six years to leave the burnt-out lamp that was void of these qualities? The fact that the little boy does not instantly accept Lincoln as a hero works in conjunction with these metaphors to question Lincoln's heroism. Even when the mother tries to justify Lincoln’s heroism to her son by saying he kept faith, which kept him from straying from the lantern, her son comes back with, "what is faith?" To this the mother has no answer and she becomes angry with her son and the two leave the memorial. The mother, in this case, could be seen as analogous for the majority of the American population who just take Lincoln’s heroism, with regard to race especially, with faith, and don’t really question or analyze it. In this analogy it is arguable that Gordimer could be the little boy, the son, the next generation perhaps, who confronts this blind faith and questions what has earlier been accepted. This analogy could be both a critique of Lincoln's alleged "heroism," especially in light of the fact that his actions did not technically free all of the slaves, but could also act as a self-declarative text in which Gordimer justifies her right and duty to ask questions.

About the same time, probably somewhere around 1944, Gordimer wrote "The First Circle," a play performed by the Johannesburg Society that uses William Blake's Dante and Virgil from "The Divine Comedy." She would have been around 19 or 20 at the time she wrote this, which is a great credit to her because the play not only won a dramatic award, but also because in this play she moves beyond using metaphor and allegory and moves to a more direct technique: direct characterization that specifically personifies each level of Africa's social system. Her characters include a Rich Woman, Poor Woman, Businessman, Scientist, Clergyman, and Politician, with Dante and Virgil determining why each of these people, these functions of African society, all deserve to be in hell. While she does go through and interview each person individually and qualifies the exact reason they are each in hell, the running theme between all of their sins is indifference and apathy. The phrase, "it was not enough," is repeated numerous times throughout the play by the scientist who tells Dante and Virgil each one of their stories. Gordimer uses a Shakespearean quote to fully demonstrate this theme; "Neither good nor evil did they take part." Dante interjects, "Then they have done nothing master?" Virgil answers in Shakespearean response, "Nothing. And nothing will come of nothing."

I think it is important here to notice two major points about what this quote illuminates about the play. First, that Gordimer's critique of the situation in Africa is not incriminating one specific group for doing one specific action, but instead the population or society at large for a lack of action. Second, what is the significance that Gordimer chooses to mediate her critique through authors like Blake and Shakespeare? Perhaps this is her literary strategy to achieve her political agenda in the text, to use familiar and accepted texts that come with their own power to make her own argument against indifference even more powerful. I would argue that both this technique and her use of metaphor and allegory in her short stories both work very effectively in illuminating her attitudes about economic and racial issues of inequality.