Ant Heap Comparison - Essay Example

Ant heap comparison Doris Lessing’s the Ant heap is a short story revolving around the struggles involving two boys who are growing up and learning how to cope with racism in their lives in Zimbabwe in Africa. The two boys Dirk and Tommy are two close friends who are used to portray the importance of friendship and its meaning. Mr. Macintosh, a rich white man runs a digging business that consists of a pit in a horrible and dangerous environment being dug by hundreds of Africans. At the expense of human suffering the pit grows deeper and deeper as gold and dirt are removed. Mr. Clark is hired as Mr. Macintosh’s engineer. Mr. Macintosh and Mr. Clark and his family are the only white persons living near the pit. Tommy is Mr. Clark’s son who grows up playing with black children although he is white. His mother warns him against playing with them and when he asks her the reason she does not give him a clear answer and this makes him lonely. To overcome his loneliness he starts making clay figures of his black friends, among them Dirk. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is a narrative about a distant settlement in a time not known, run by the Magistrate. They live peacefully with the surrounding natives. On one particular day the settlement is visited by Colonel Joll who has come with orders from the Empire. They are therefore viewed as a threat to the settlement. Joll uses cruel methods of interrogating and the result of this is imprisonment and torture of the natives. The people start living with fear of the barbarians and feel unsafe living in the settlement. The Magistrate is sympathetic of their treatment and when he tries to help a young black woman to go back to her native people, he is seen as a traitor and is thrown to jail (Coetzee 135). Both narrators have lived in the British Africa despite their different writings of the African history. When the Ant heap was published, the British still held most of Africa as their colonies. Apartheid in South Africa was still in place as the whites still enjoyed the rights and privileges that the black people lacked. This is the situation being described by Lessing in The Ant heap. Coetzee describes what is more truly than anything else, what it meant to be a white person and aware in the face of apartheid’s oppression. South Africa possesses a distinctive history and a political landscape and this makes it a different country from the others. Coetzee notes that things could have been different if this happened in a place other than South Africa (Coetzee 78). The difference between these two works of art is the means of describing the racial situation in South Africa. Lessing uses the description of the setting instead of using actions and symbols when revealing the situation. Lessing’s narrative begins with some pages of descriptions and before we are introduced to the main character we have already learnt of the black workers who worked in a pit of death owned by Mr. Macintosh. Mr. Macintosh is less concerned about the safety of his workers and is more concerned with his own personal interest. Lessing goes on to depict the situation of the whites as a symbol of the negative properties of power. The author shows how the black people play drums and dance during the night through the use of the character Tommy. Tommy is not a racist and has black friends like Dirk who they normally play with. Coetzee brings out the racial conditions in South Africa by the use of the protagonist and the other characters. In Coetzee’s novel, the racial differences are revealed by the main character David Lurrie, a white university professor. Since his divorce with his wife, he has had no serious relationship with women except the weekly meetings with a prostitute and eventually he gets a mistress. His family’s farm has been taken over by their former black servant. He is involved in an explicit sexual affair with a colored female student and this makes him resign and he relocates to his daughter’s farm. This is symbolic of the post-apartheid situation and David’s helpless situation can be a symbol of the failure of colonialism (Coetzee 123). Due to this David, unlike Tommy in the Ant heaps, has a feeling of leaving the golden freedom age behind him and a development of a new country with restrictions. Tommy describes this change from childhood to adulthood as a discovery of the racial differences. Tommy had exhibited racism as a child and became aware of the racial state during his growing up. Tommy with his black friends represents the feelings of those who are suppressed and not those who are white. David is acclimatized by the apartheid way of life in occupation of power. The loss of power has a great impact on David as he realizes that he is a failure. Tommy and Lucy are the two characters who can be placed in the context of racist analysis as they encourage and accept black power. Despite their acceptance, they are physically delayed on the way as Lucy is raped and Tommy is involved in a brawl with Dirk. Eventually they find out that the black people that they helped are as clever as them. Coetzee portrays pessimism through Lucy’s failure while Lessing portrays optimism through Tommy’s success in helping Dirk go to university. In these two narratives, different characters have different views of other races. David is realistic and direct on his view of the black Africans. The comparison of David and Mr. Macintosh brings out their different perspective of the black people. Dirk is the most racially conscious as he is a half-caste as such people are not like by both blacks and whites even though the law considers him to be a native. Lucy is the most racially indifferent person in these two works of art. Her speech to David on equality is a good description of the conflicts among the apartheid and the post-apartheid way of thinking (Coetzee 97). This concerns her relation with her father and not apartheid. Due to their failures David and Lucy hope to find new beginnings. For the Ant heap, new beginnings are brought about by their victories where Tommy and Dirk go to the university and there is equality in terms of race. Lessing uses the narrative to provide optimism of the end of apartheid despite the battle of ideologies. The major characters in Lessing’s narrative fulfill President De Klerk’s and Mandela’s optimism of the end of the apartheid era. The comparison of these two narratives brings out the authors’ use of characterization, symbolism and descriptions to bring out the apartheid situation in South Africa. Lessing’s narrative lacks the proper distinguishing of the intention, the racism and South Africa’s inequality are explicitly defined and the personality of the characters and their relationships are definitely symbolic. The settings descriptions during such times illustrated their differences at a great detail. There is a clear illustration of the friendship between Dirk and Tommy and this portrays hope and optimism. Coetzee uses symbolism in Petrus representation of the new post-apartheid era in South Africa though has a pessimist view. The use of humor and irony has been brought out by David who depicts a falling white man’s society. The views portrayed by these two authors are interdependent because they describe the two chronological stages of South Africa’s society. Works Cited Coetzee, J. M. & Askew, C, C. Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel. Westminster: Penguin. 2010. Print. Read More