English assignment

Apartheid

Apartheid means separateness and comes from the Afrikaans language. This was introduced in the South African society in 1948 when the National Party made a law of it after the election. The people were divided into three groups: white, black and coloured. The black and coloured people were suppressed by the white and, as an example; the non-whites couldn’t be at the same toilet as the whites.

 

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer was born in 20 November 1923 in springs in Transvaal (a Union of South Africa). She is one of several South African Nobel Laureates.  And she was awarded the prize for literature in 1991. Although her books were often banned, she continued to write about the lives of her countrymen and women and how apartheid destroys them. Her first story was published in a South African magazine when she was 15, and her latest short story collection come out in 2007. Nadine Gordimer has lived all her life in South Africa.

 

 

The plot

The fairy-tale is about a small family living in the suburb. The family consists of two parents, their little boy, their trustworthy house maid, their cat and their dog. The parents built a fence around their house and home to protect their son. The fence was electric and had sharp edges and stuff. Even though the parents wanted to protect their son, he wanted to “play” with” the fence. Unfortunately, he died and was cut into pieces.

Why is apartheid a part of the story?

Because they tried to separate from the other people in the neighborhood because colored people were moving closer. They had an insane security system, so they could separate from rest of the world. But the security system chopped up a little boy.

Elements in the text

Nadine Gordimer uses fairy tale elements such as the simple language, conflict between good and evil, and the use of a moral to create her own fairy tale. She also relates her story to the story of Sleeping Beauty. Her fairy tale is a fairy tale in reverse which she uses to warn people that no good can come out of the apartheid ways of South Africa.

 

 

Why can we call this story a reverse fairy-tale?

We can call this story a reverse fairy-tale because it doesn’t have a happy ending. There are also many repetitions in the story, and they are kind of a threat and that’s not typical for a fairy-tale. Unlike a typical fairy-tale, the curve is just rising and rising. The end comes like “poof”, and the evil powers win. In fairy-tales, the good wins and you have a highlight in the story before it calms down a bit in the end.