Comparison of Nadine Gordimer and Alice Walker - Essay Example

? Compare and Contrast, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Walker Introduction thesis Racism and ethni during periods of struggle: Ethnicity, while linked to race, refers to social characters that are common by a human population. Some of the social characters often used for racial classification are nationality, tribe, religious faith, shared language, culture, and traditions. Gordimer’s ‘Country Lovers’ revolves around two lovers; an interracial couple forbidden to be together by the laws of South Africa during apartheid. In as much as interracial couples face difficulties the world over, specific conditions with regards to apartheid had serious problems for Paulus and Thebedi. Analysis The characters in ‘Country Lovers’ are conscious of the dangers of being together but choose to get involved nevertheless with Paulus as a member of the white ruling class while Thebedi is a poor and powerless black. Alice Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’ on the other hand revolves around black women who long to escape and be free but are deprived of the elusive freedom by both the society and their spouses. Black men in her work are exposed in a negative light and depicted as oppressors of black women. In both stories, the authors talk about racism and discrimination of some form. The authors both articulate the hardships women of colour faced and the fear they lived in during the respective periods. Racism is not a particularly concealed message in both of these stories, but the two authors approach the topic from slightly different viewpoints. Therefore, both stories expose and attack brutalities and hypocrisy of racism but do so in very different ways and with very different emotional effects. ‘Country Lovers’ by Nadine Gordimer and Walker’s ‘The Welcome Table’ are both stories which complain of racism and picture terrible human penalty. However, they differ to some extent not only in the circumstance within which each story was written, but also the way they are written and general emotional impact on the reader. Gordimer’s story was written in South Africa under wicked apartheid regime which used law and tools of the state to impose dreadful living conditions on all non-whites in South Africa while preserving wealth, economic and educational opportunities as exclusive privilege of South-African whites. Indeed the immorality as of 1950 is highly related to an understanding of Gordimer’s story since sexual relations between people of different races an illegal act at the time. By contrast, Walkers story is set in United States in the post civil rights era, but Walker concerns herself with the difficulty of order, rural African –Americans who have been not capable of taking advantage of freedoms gained by the civil rights movement and who are fated to life governed by the heritage of slavery. Both stories explore hypocrisy. In Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’, even the title itself is ironic because the African-American woman who walk subconsciously into a white church finds no reception, but humiliated and shocked that there’s no welcome table for her in Gods house, because white and black people have their own churches. The ‘Welcome Table’ is an interesting image, it is a suggestion of the table on the last supper, symbolizing Christianity by altar where communion is celebrated and where Christians go eat bread and drink wine. The table also stands for heaven and its abundance where the old lady believes she will reside after her death. In the white church where she enters and then ejected from, there’s no welcome table, despite the Christian teaching of love and forgiveness for all. As Klinkowitz (2001) puts it, “If you are a Christian, a sincere one, do you think Jesus was present in that hypocritical white church? Or is he out there on the road with the old dying lady?” In Gordimers ‘Country Lovers’ the hypocrisy is more personal despite having the support of legal systems and equipment of apartheid system. As a young boy growing up, Paulus simply follows his natural feelings by being attracted to Thebedi. There’s beautiful innocence and tantalizing sensuousness to the description of his physical desire for her, but as he gets older and becomes more conventional, more socialized, he is happy to betray her and ultimately kill the child they had together to save himself from prosecution under the immorality Act. For that reason his hypocrisy is personal, malicious and self-centered, whereas the hypocrisy in the ‘welcome table’ is more general and founded on centuries of slavery and oppression of African –Americans in the United States. In both stories the economic oppression of blacks is made clear. In South Africa it was a purposeful aim of the apartheid system to deny South African blacks economic advancement .In the ‘Welcome Table’, members of the white impostor do not see a weak old lady; “they see cooks, chauffers, maids, mistresses” (Walker, 1973), the cliched unimportant jobs that were performed by African –Americans .The old lady’s poverty is clear from state of her clothing; the missing buttons down the front her mildewed black dress” (Walker, 1973). In ‘Country Lovers’ too, there’s an economic and social partition that separates Paulus from Thebedi, his father is the local landowner and he gets sent away to school which is the start of growing apart from each other. Thebedi is destined to a lifetime of tedious jobs and like all Africans under apartheid is denied access to education. The social and economic gap between the lovers is incomprehensible; living conditions in Kraal are an absolute contrast to the facilities and lavishness of the farmhouse. Both stories also revolve around the idea of fear. In Gordimer’s ‘Country Lovers’ there is the horror of miscegenation which leads to the murder of the baby, but there’s also Paulus’ fear of prosecution not just for murder of the baby, but for sexual relations with Thebedi in the first place. For Paulus father the whole incident seems more of social embarrassment. Similarly in the ‘Welcome Table’ there’s an element of social embarrassment ;the white church goers do not know how to deal with the old black lady who has strayed mistakenly into their house , but there’s also a more instinctive, racist fear of unknown. “The other many of them- the white congregation, saw jungle orgies in an evil peace, while others were reminded of riotous rebel looting and raping in the streets (Walker, 1973)”. In neither stories are the white people seeing human beings like themselves and then feeling the natural human compassion one would extend to another human being. Walker’s use of the word “centuries” suggest the long period of oppression and mistreatment endured by African Americans. Having been ejected from church, the old lady meets Jesus and talks to him joyously until she dies by the side of the road. It is ironic because the Jesus who appears to her is blue – eyed and Aryan and is based on a picture that the old black lady stole from the bible of her white employers. This image of Jesus is a construction of the dominant white culture as porter point: Alice Walker’s short story illustrates the difficulty of rescuing Jesus from a racist, Euro-American ideology, this white blue-eyed Jesus accompanies her but we are never told if her encounter is truly redemptive or not, or if Jesus can be unraveled from the pages of the white slave owners Bible. As readers, we are left to set up our own response to the ending. Has Christianity been used a social control to offer African-Americans a spiritual outlet for their frustrations? Even if that is the case, the old lady does at least die happily, although outcast by the society that has used her and her ancestors. Conclusion Although both stories share very similar concerns, they are written very differently. Gordimers story is longer; more detailed and takes place over many years. We witness a relationship growing and changing, the characters are named, personalized and therefore, when Thebedi breaks down and cry in court, we most likely feel empathy for her. By the same token, we are more likely to be emotionally engaged by Paulus’s act of betrayal and the murder of his own son. However at the end of the story Gordimer distances us from the characters by concentrating on judicial procedure in court and reporting of the case by newspapers. By contrast, Walker writes more briefly with confines to one day. Walker does not use names and gives her story a timeless, general feel bringing to the fore the old lady to a position of every woman or at least, every American woman. The ‘Welcome Table’ has elements which remind us of biblical parables. In its much ironic reversal of social roles, expectations and events, this story uses the formal structure of parable suggests it’s from the biblical heritage of Walkers church going childhood. Biblical parables are designed to teach. Does Walker’s story have the same function? It would appear to teach us a lesson about importance of compassion to the oppressed, but it is also clearly critical of the so called Christian values of the white church from which the old lady is ejected. Christian doctrine suggests that love of one’s neighbor is important. Jesus in the New Testament has nothing to say about race and formal or informal segregation. Of the two stories Walker’s ‘Welcome Table’ is somewhat more successful because of its conciseness and its parable-like nature. Gordimer‘s story while sharing the same objective of racism and ethnicity, has a different impact because it is a story of love gone wrong , love denied by social conditions, love controlled by the law. References Walker, A. (1973). In love & trouble: Stories of Black women. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Gordimer, N. (1979). Town and country lovers. Los Angeles, Calif: Sylvester & Orphanos. Klinkowitz, J. (2001). You've got to be carefully taught: learning and relearning literature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Read More