51 pages • 1 hour read
Nadine GordimerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The novel’s themes of societal upheaval, sudden transformations, and personal rebirth draw on imagery that analogizes its action to passages from scripture and/or liturgical rite, underscoring its momentous, almost miraculously life-changing events. The brutal civil war that upends South African society, ending centuries of white rule and emptying the cities of their Caucasian populations, has the (uncanny) suddenness and devastation of an apocalypse or the Biblical flood. Looking back on her family’s frantic exodus from a burning Johannesburg, Maureen reflects that “it was all a miracle; and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror” (11).
Shepherding the Smaleses’ narrow escape, their Black servant, July, steps into the role of a Noah or Moses, guiding them through a hostile wasteland to shelter: the remote, pastoral enclave where his extended family lives. Maureen spends “three days and nights hidden on the floor of the [escape] vehicle” (3), alluding to the biblical figures of Jonah and Lazarus, both of whom lay “buried” for that exact span of time: Jonah in the belly of a whale, Lazarus in his grave. Maureen’s salvation, then, is a symbolic resurrection into a new life—albeit one partly of “horror,” which upends her world and even her understanding of her past life.
By Nadine Gordimer
Burger's Daughter
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer
Jump and Other Stories
Jump and Other Stories
Nadine Gordimer
None to Accompany Me
None to Accompany Me
Nadine Gordimer
Once Upon a Time
Once Upon a Time
Nadine Gordimer
Six Feet of the Country
Six Feet of the Country
Nadine Gordimer
The Conservationist
The Conservationist
Nadine Gordimer
The Moment Before the Gun Went Off
The Moment Before the Gun Went Off
Nadine Gordimer
The Pickup
The Pickup
Nadine Gordimer
The Train From Rhodesia
The Train From Rhodesia
Nadine Gordimer
The Ultimate Safari
The Ultimate Safari
Nadine Gordimer
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