Country Lovers by Nadine Gordimer
What difference could it have made from then to here?
Kimberly Shultz
Eng 125 Introduction to Literature
Deborah Duff
April 18th, 2011
With the way the world was a hundred years ago and it is today, is it possible to learn from the literary works of that time and apply them to now. I feel that there is a lot to learn from what was written especially when it comes to racism. How is our time different from the past? How is it the same? If the story Country lover written by Nadine Gordimer (1975) were a different time will things had been different for Thebedi and Paulus?
I chose to focus on the story of two lovers who were thrown apart by their time. Whom had to hide their affairs from their family and their social status. If it were now would they still had the illegitimate child as it pertained to those days. Being childhood friends and growing together through the summer vacations they spent together playing. As they grew together and him from boarding school one summer he brought Thebedi a gift:” a painted box he had made in his wood-work class.” (Clungston 2010, 3.1 page 44 paragraph 3) as any young child still at that age she in return gave him a gift back a bracelet she had made of thin brass wire and the grey-and-white beans”.they both lied to their social statues. He said natives made the bracelet for him. All the while she told the girls that a secret admirer made her the box. I feel this is the first sign of their puppy tail love but because of their social statue they had to keep it a secret. It is made apparent in the first paragraph that they are from two different social statuses. As quoted from the story “Country Lovers” it is told “farm children play together/ once the white children go away to school they soon don’t play together/ most of the black children get some sort of schooling/ drop every year farther behind/ the white children have surpassed these with the vocabulary of boarding-school and the possibilities of inter-school sports
Kimberly Shultz
Eng 125 Introduction to Literature
Deborah Duff
April 18th, 2011
With the way the world was a hundred years ago and it is today, is it possible to learn from the literary works of that time and apply them to now. I feel that there is a lot to learn from what was written especially when it comes to racism. How is our time different from the past? How is it the same? If the story Country lover written by Nadine Gordimer (1975) were a different time will things had been different for Thebedi and Paulus?
I chose to focus on the story of two lovers who were thrown apart by their time. Whom had to hide their affairs from their family and their social status. If it were now would they still had the illegitimate child as it pertained to those days. Being childhood friends and growing together through the summer vacations they spent together playing. As they grew together and him from boarding school one summer he brought Thebedi a gift:” a painted box he had made in his wood-work class.” (Clungston 2010, 3.1 page 44 paragraph 3) as any young child still at that age she in return gave him a gift back a bracelet she had made of thin brass wire and the grey-and-white beans”.they both lied to their social statues. He said natives made the bracelet for him. All the while she told the girls that a secret admirer made her the box. I feel this is the first sign of their puppy tail love but because of their social statue they had to keep it a secret. It is made apparent in the first paragraph that they are from two different social statuses. As quoted from the story “Country Lovers” it is told “farm children play together/ once the white children go away to school they soon don’t play together/ most of the black children get some sort of schooling/ drop every year farther behind/ the white children have surpassed these with the vocabulary of boarding-school and the possibilities of inter-school sports
References: Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. https://content.ashford.edu/books