...November 2015 Telling Times This study will examine the 1946 novel Mine Boy, by Peter Abrahams, first giving some information on the author and the background of the book and its historical context, and then exploring the elements of the novel itself, including plot, characterization, style, intended audience, and the contribution the book makes to an understanding of African life and history. A People's Voice: Black South African Writing in the Twentieth Century. Abrahams style is clear and simple. The book is certainly demonstrative of the political, cultural and economic life in South Africa in the 194 s as well as in the 199 s, and in any African country where imperialism and exploitation continue to exist. New York: Collier, 197. Shava, Piniel. With this offer the symbolic alternatives for the poor black as represented by Xuma are clear---he can lose his life and soul to the capitalist system which is epitomized in the mines, or he can become corrupted through the business of helping other poor, miserable blacks to become numb through the use of alcohol, thereby corrupting himself at the same time. The major characters around Xuma in his awakening to this politically radical position are Leah (who has adapted to the corruption spawned by capitalist exploitation by building her own bootlegging business); Ma Plank(who has been worn down by her hard life but who has acquired a deep visceral knowledge of life and death); the drunks Liz, Johannes and Daddy(who have given up...
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...underlying theme of the novel. Many parallels can be drawn from The Poisonwood Bible and to real life occurrences of the past. Definite similarities can be noticed between the conflict in the Congo, and between the conflict of apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps one of the most blatant similarities in content is between The Poisonwood Bible and Cry, The Beloved Country. Both stories tell the tale of a particular culture's arrogance in relation to the culture of another country. I hope to present the details of these similarities in the essay, while providing an explanation for cultural arrogance, along with examples of the development of this theme through the character's actions in the novel. Throughout history, Western culture has been an eminent force in the colonization and occupation of many Eastern and third world countries. Perhaps one of the most often targeted areas by the Western World is Africa. One of the most obvious examples that would come to mind would be apartheid in South Africa. South Africa was colonized by the English and Dutch in the seventeenth century. Also, the discovery of diamonds in the country sparked an English invasion in the early twentieth century, which eventually led to the system of apartheid that we all know about today. The aim of the apartheid was to maintain white domination while extending racial separation, and to hold control over the economic and social system of South Africa. Cry, The Beloved Country, was a novel by Alan Paton that portrayed...
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...Duy D. Ly 04.16.2009 Professor Rooney Post-Colonial Literature Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee In Disgrace, race plays a predominant role in the novel. Disgrace is set in post-apartheid South Africa and, although apartheid has ended, traces of racial conflicts still haunt the land and its people. In the novel Coetzee emphasizes the racial tensions and the interaction between whites and blacks when Davis Luries arrived in Salem. Disgrace can be interpreted in many ways regarding racial perception, but there is no doubt that Coetzee’s purpose is to raise the question about the new South Africa and the white people within it. The book portrays a brutal picture of life in post-apartheid South Africa, the fate of the two white characters (David and Lucy) on the land, lost with dignity and freedom. Disgrace depicts a white father and daughter’s journey though life while losing everything under the racist black rule. Disgrace is written in a direct, unique style using clever word choices. An example of the racial nature of this book is when David Luries stated, “English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa,” (Coetzee, P.117). It is as if David was referring that English is not the type of language for Africans. David Luries lives in a dark world with dark desires. His frequent demand of sex leads him to his downfall. Melanie is a prefect example of David’s desire. “She is wearing black tights and a black sweater. Her hips are as slim as a twelve-year-old’s”(Coetzee...
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...Xuma (the main character of the book) is thrown into this state of insensible shock as a result of seeing the realities of city life. Abrahams is hailed by many because he informs to the whole world of the horrific reality in the apartheid system of South Africa. The setting of the story takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa and follows Xuma, a villager who is looking for a better life in the city, and monitors his up and down progress as he tries to find answers in an unjust world. The central theme of this novel is Xuma’s struggle to be freed as a human being in a society where the ruling minority controls the oppressed majority in the apartheid system. In the novel, we will explore the psychological, social protest, mine work, lifestyles, and law enforcement aspects that are depicted in the novel. In the book, the reader is introduced to a few new characters and how they deal with the stresses of racial discrimination in the city. Eliza, the niece of Leah, lives behind a façade that drives her to madness. She lives in a denial that she is black and she will still be judged even if she was born in the city and is literate. She also expresses interest in Xuma, but is hesitant because she asserts her needs for a man who lives a white man’s way of life. He loves her but she does not love him because he does not fulfill a white man’s way of life. Leah confirms this by reasoning with Xuma, “You know who I mean. Eliza. However, she won’t have you. You’re not good enough...
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...hears and debates it with themselves. I would care about others before me, because it’s a loyal action, and that action can change people’s point of view on you. The novel, A Long Walk To Water tells the story of Salva and Nya, teenagers living in South Sudan that have to struggle each day with their own issues. Nya has to walk 12 hours a day just to get water from a local source, and when Salva got more mature he helped out those people living there. He and his coworkers went down to Nya’s area of the country and they built a well. Another example, is the article, “In South Africa, volunteers deliver water to ease drought emergency.” There was a drought two years ago in South Africa, and government officials sent down trucks of water...
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...different countries and even whole continents, movements and regimes have been formed where groups of people take the power so that they can abuse, denigrate, ignore and even disparage and underestimate other people base on the colour of their skin or their religion. One of these systems of government, and probably one of the most influential of modern times, was the Apartheid which ruled over South Africa since 1948 to 1994. “a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994”2 Although Apartheid was legally established from 1948, the racism in South Africa has its roots since the twentieth century as the Dutch descendants initiated racial separation as an idea for the country’s development. When Apartheid started being applied as a law, racial segregation and abuse had its boom because black, Indian, Arabic and coloured population lost their right to participate in elections and to take charge of public office jobs, all these places were occupied by the whites, who represented only the 21% of the entire South African population. This way the white people was responsible of leaving the highest percentage of people unrepresented in the Parliament and also unable to speak up for the injustice they lived in. As the Parliament applied more and more laws, coloured and black people were being less represented and more repressed, they could not circulate freely through the “white regions”, were not...
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...In J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace, it is a very powerful novel that has many unfortunate events all taking place in South Africa. J.M Coetzee wanted to really outline the topic of racial oppression in South Africa and interlink it with very grim themes that are very raw and brutal. There are many themes in the novel ‘Disgrace’’ such as sex, family (relationship between David and his daughter Lucy), violence, men and masculinity, and women and power. In this essay, my main focus is the theme of women and power and the injustice they face in their society. This essay will also briefly explain how the men’s perspective towards women can be viewed as degrading and immoral. It is an intense theme, the text represents a male dominated society and women are followers. It outlines the idea that men do not value women, they have very little respect for them. It also emphasizes the idea that men hold a lot of power compared to women. However, throughout the novel the characters, especially David, they change. He is represented as an arrogant man, feels superior. Throughout the novel, his character tends to change; he becomes powerless in the sense that he loses everything, his job, and reputation and not to mention his dignity. David Lurie is an intriguing character; he is a professor teaching romantic poetry and has so much passion for literature and arts as well as culture but the irony is that his personal life is led by ignorance, this is evident in the way he objectifies both Melanie and...
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...However, the things they leave with are significantly different. They took away a sense of enlightenment, worldly balance, guilt, and shame from Africa, and, most importantly, the loss of Ruth May. Throughout The Posionwood Bible, the Congo molded the Price women, it shaped their souls. Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May were all affected by their time in the Congo, varying greatly in their final philosophical perceptions— they lie on a spectrum of apathy to deliberating guilt, with cynicism, realism, and balance speckled throughout the...
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...are buried at St Mary’s Church. Haggard was an english writer and wrote a lot of adventure novels such as; She, and the novel which he is most famous for called King Solomon's Mines and other great adventure novels as well.H Rider Haggard attended Garsington Oxfordshire to study H.J.Graham, although unlike his older brothers who attended multiple private universities Henry Rider Haggard attended Ipswich Grammar School.Henry’s father did not allow him to go to a private school because he believed that Henry would not amount to much unlike his brothers and he was also unable to pay to further his education at the private school do to it being so unaffordable.In the year 1876...
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...The Nelson Mandela quote depicts apartheid as the root cause for oppression of blacks in South Africa. During this time in South Africa, apartheid plagued the country. Although many people fought to bring down Apartheid, Nelson Mandela played a major role in actually ending Apartheid. After spending years in jail for opposing the government on apartheid, he gave a speech. Durning Mandela's 1962 speech on the South African apartheid he stated, "But there comes a time, as it came in my life, when a man is denied the right to live a normal life, when he can only live the life of an outlaw because the Government has so decreed to use the law to impose a state of outlawry upon him." In Mandela's speech he talks about what it was like to live his...
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...the words of God, people throughout history are able to rationalize dominance over others, through claiming superiority in race or religion. In Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, the Bible and God unify people, showing how despite their differences, black and white men are still able to form a relationship regardless of various obstacles. Illustrating that grief and God can offer comfort and courage, to become either South Africa’s salvation or downfall....
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...Stylistic Analysis of a Novel A stylistic analysis should address questions like these: 1. What is the discourse type? 2. What is the topic? 3. Who is it talking to/for whom and why? 4. How do the stylistic choices relate to these three questions? Here is a sample text: |1 | | |2 |Alex La Guma, Time of the Butcherbird. (a) When the government trucks had gone, the dust they had left behind hung over the plain and smudged | |3 |the blistering afternoon sun so that it appeared as a daub of white-hot metal through the moving haze. (b) The dust hung in the sky for some | |4 |time before settling down on the white plain. (c) The plain was flat and featureless except for two roads bull-dozed from the ground, | |5 |bisecting each other to lie like scars of a branded cross on the pocked and powdered skin of the earth. (d) In the distance a new water tank | |6 |on metal stilts jutted like an iron glove clenched against the empty sky. (e) The dust settled slowly on the metal of the tank and on the | |7 |surface of the brackish water it contained, laboriously pumped up from below the sand; on the rough cubist mounds of folded and piled tents | |8 |dumped there by officialdom; on the sullen faces of the people who had been unloaded like the odds and ends of furniture...
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...How does J.M. Coetzee present David Lurie in chapter one and what do we learn about him? Coetzee’s novel Disgrace appears to be centred around an immature, arrogant, self-centred David Lurie. In the novel as a whole but particularly chapter one Coetzee demonstrates, through Lurie, the loss of power due to age and the loss of ‘white rights’ as the novel is set in South Africa after the apartheid. The loss of power links with Tennessee Williams’ play ‘A streetcar named Desire’ as both the protagonists demonstrate the loss of power and their unconventional coping strategies. Coetzee shows the reader the negative impact breaking away from the norms of society can have upon an individual. I think David Lurie is a character with whom the reader should sympathise with as he does not know who he is which may be what causes him to act in an irrational way. Furthermore I believe Coetzee aims to make the reader feel detached and uncomfortable in the first chapter thus reflecting Lurie’s feelings about this ‘new world’. The theme of age and maturity is presented heavily throughout the novel. Growing old appears to be an unfortunate thing in the novel as Coetzee claims ‘for a man of his age’ Lurie has ‘solved the problem of sex rather well’. The beginning of this statement gives a disparaging view of again and could cause the reader to believe that growing old is something we should resist. However this is contradicted by the second part of the sentence as it gives the impression that...
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... | Acknowledgements Many people gave me support and help in the process of writing the paper. I’d like first to give my grate to my dear teacher, Andy, who generously gave me his kindly help and instructions during the whole process of my paper-writing. Then I’d like to give my many thanks to my classmates who helped me a lot with my information collecting and paper-polishing. Most important of all, I want to give my thanks to my mother university and all the teachers in the English Department, who educated and cultivated me to be a qualified graduate in the future. Abstract When Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the novel was a huge success. It talked about the slavery which was a controversial issue at that time. Many critics made comments on this novel. With the passage of time, attitudes to the book changed considerably. The history of African American in US has always been considered as a bitter story. In recent years, their status...
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...Keith 1 Keith Mbulo Dr. Cheng-Levine English 102 April 13, 2011 The Disgraceful Behavior South Africa has come a long way from its apartheid roots of 1948 through 1993, but as all bad habits, the racial tension has been dying hard. The history of South Africa as a nation affects the relationships among the people today. People’s moral values and behavior have been affected. Even with progressive thinking, an element of “upbringing” comes into play. This mental stigma can be attributed to many different causes, but the main point is that people’s psychological views have been affected by the events of the apartheid. With context of the culture and the ideology presented, the analysis of the character’s psychological behavior toward one another can begin. The novel “Disgrace” is a story about a Professor who seems to have an issue when dealing with the people around him; mainly the women in his life. His values and behavior are warped to fit his own agenda with little regard for other’s view of the situation. The story shows the choices that the main character, David Lurie makes, and the consequences of those choices; thus, the title of “Disgrace.” In the beginning of the novel, we are presented with Lurie’s “first” woman, Soraya. She is an employee of an escort service which Lurie frequents weekly to “be with” her. It’s established very early on that Lurie is content with simply being with Soraya once a week. “In the desert of the week Thursday has become an oasis of...
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