17 pages • 34 minutes 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.
This story takes place in the desert, and sand is invoked in a way that is both literal and metaphorical. Sand is inhospitable to roots and growth but is also soft and embracing. One can run through sand in bare feet, as the village children do at the beginning of the story; at the same time, the sand covers their tracks as soon as they have been made. The story compares the desert to the ocean in its combination of resistance and softness: “[The sand] lapped all around, from sky to sky, cast little rhythmical cups of shadow, so that the sand became the sea” (43).
At the end of the story, the disillusioned wife on the train experiences her despair as “the sound of sand pouring” (47). The sense is that she is being buried alive so that the sand’s softness is ultimately a form of brutality. Her shame has to do with a sense of herself as a creature of privilege, on the winning side of an unfair class struggle. The sand can be seen as a metaphor for the barren capitalist society of which she is a part.
By Nadine Gordimer
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer
July's People
Nadine Gordimer
Jump and Other Stories
Nadine Gordimer
None to Accompany Me
Nadine Gordimer
Once Upon a Time
Nadine Gordimer
Six Feet of the Country
Nadine Gordimer
The Conservationist
Nadine Gordimer
The Moment Before the Gun Went Off
Nadine Gordimer
The Pickup
Nadine Gordimer
The Ultimate Safari
Nadine Gordimer
African Literature
View Collection
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Challenging Authority
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Marriage
View Collection
Nobel Laureates in Literature
View Collection
Power
View Collection
Pride & Shame
View Collection
South African Literature
View Collection