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My IB Extended Essay about racism in South African literature which got me the second prize in the Norwegian Contest for Youth Scientists as well as an extra prize from the research Council of Norway. Though only two specific works are analyzed in the essay, I have tried to comment on some general trends in South African literature and the essay can be read without prior knowledge of the works or South Africa at all.

D. Lessing’s short story “The Antheap” from the collection “Five” published in 1954 and J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” from 1999 are analysed and compared in their portrayal of racism. Two terms form the backbone of the analysis; ‘Coetzee’s pessimism’ and ‘Lessing’s optimism’. The overall concept is that the works are based on these opposing views of South Africa and that their respective contents therefore are widely different.

The racial situations in South Africa are portrayed differently in the two works, considering literary techniques. While Lessing’s story includes detailed and numerous descriptions of the setting, Coetzee’s novel reveals the situation mainly through symbolism and his characters. It is therefore also interesting to study some of the characters in the works, and we find that the most significant characters have counterparts in both works, and that the plots are somewhat similar. Ultimately, a conclusion is reached:

Lessing’s short story does not disguise its purpose, the racism and inequality of South Africa is explicitly described. The inter-racial relationships in the short story are clearly symbolic and the descriptions show us the enormous racial differences. On the other hand, Coetzee’s use of subtle symbolism in the plot of his novel and the somewhat more explicit symbolism rested in his characters shows us both his political and personal views of post-apartheid South Africa. These views, although possibly correct, are faulty argued through the concept of ‘historical guilt’ .

Ultimately, it is also found that ‘Coetzee’s pessimism’ and ‘Lessing’s optimism’ are not opposing but interdependent in the sense that they describe chronologically following stages of the South African society.

The South African racial situation has been a main issue in South African literature and can therefore be studied in a meaningful and interesting literary analysis. In this essay we shall see how two selected fictional works, both by major authors, portray this conflict. The works are selected on the basis of their historical setting (pre-apartheid and post-apartheid respectively), their focus on the racist society and the respected position of the authors. The aim of the analysis, therefore, is to see whether the authors subscribe to significantly different views of the racial conflicts and its solutions and what significance these views have for the literature. In this essay I will evaluate and compare how the authors use symbolism, characterizations and descriptions to portray racism in South Africa and how this builds up under their respective views on this racism, for which I have chosen the terms ‘Coetzee’s pessimism’ and ‘Lessing’s optimism’. Ultimately, these can be said to be themes of the books respectively and the literary features simply support these thesises.

It was significant in this selection that the authors have both lived in British Africa but have written during considerably different parts of African history: Lessing lived in Rhodesia between 1925 and 1949. Coetzee, the 2003 literature Nobel Prize and double Booker Price receiver, lived in South Africa from his birth in 1940 to 2002 except for six years in Texas. He now resides in Australia.

When Lessing published “Five”, from which “The Antheap” is taken, in 1953, European empires still held most of Africa as colonies. In South Africa, apartheid was legislated in the early- and middle 1950’s – thus making it an important era in the history of racism. From the dawn of colonialism in the 1500’s, however, had whites enjoyed rights and possibilities that natives did not have. It is this pre-apartheid situation Lessing describes in “The Antheap”. Coetzee, on the other hand, is said to describe, “more truly than any other, what it was to be white and conscious in the face of apartheid's stupidities and cruelties” and, it seems, he portrays the post-apartheid period equally truly. His novel “Disgrace” was first published in 1999, and set in a contemporary situation. By then, apartheid had been demolished and whites and nonwhites enjoyed the same rights, also in South Africa.

It should also be mentioned in the introduction that South Africa has a unique history and political landscape and that the South African society therefore functions somewhat differently from that of other countries. Coetzee explicitly states that “‘[i]n another time, in another place it might [have been different]. But in this place, at this time, it is not. […] This place being South Africa’” . Through the essay, therefore, a few comments will be made about the South African society to enhance understanding.

A clear difference in the works is the means through which the racial situation is described. Coetzee describes the racial situation in South Africa through the situation of his main character and through his characters in general, while Lessing utilizes descriptions of the setting, rather than symbols and actions to reveal the situation. Lessing’s story begins with several pages of descriptions, and already before we are introduced to the main character we learn that “the natives who worked in this mine called it the ‘Pit of death’, and they called Mr. Macintosh, the white mine owner, ‘The Gold Stomach’.” This, of course, refers to the lack of interest the white landowner has for the security of his black workers and the excessive focus on personal gain, which will be treated in more detail later. The stomach effectively describes the situation of the whites, but can also be seen as a symbol of the destructive properties of power. Lessing also describes how the natives play drums and dance at night, and it is portrayed mostly through Tommy’s observations. Tommy is Lessing’s main character, a young white boy growing up by a mine in South Africa. Through the story, Tommy’s anti-racist behaviour becomes significant, especially as he makes non-white friends, particularly with Dirk.

In Coetzee’s novel it is the actions and situation of his main character, white university professor David Lurie, which reveals the racial differences. David has had no serious relationship to women since he divorced his wife, but has weekly appointments with a prostitute and later finds a mistress. His only family, his daughter Lucy, lives in the countryside and has had her farm partially taken over by her former black servant, Petrus. At the same time, David resigns from his post at the university after a sexual relationship with one of his coloured, female students and moves to his daughter’s farm. This situation can be seen as symbolic of the situation of the whites in post-apartheid South Africa or David’s helplessness can be seen as symbolic of the failure of colonialism. Brazilian literature analyst Thomas Bonnici suggests the latter:

Bonnici’s analysis of David’s sexual relationships can also be applied to Mr. Macintosh who also sleeps with coloured women many years his junior. This, again, illustrates the relationship between white and black South Africans (colonized and colonizer during the apartheid years): The black men earn the white man’s money while the white man sleeps with the black man’s wife. Also Coetzee explicitly describes the apartheid situation in this way: “Petrus is the one who swiftly and efficiently lays out their wares, the one who knows the prices, takes the money, makes the change. Petrus is, in fact, the one who does the work, while he [David] sits and warms his hands. Just like the old days: Baas en Klaas.” Both situations describe the nonwhites working and the whites doing little but pleasing themselves and taking the money: Mr. Macintosh’s sleeping with the Negro women ultimately sums up to pleasing himself.

Such an analysis can also be extended within each work. Tommy would then represent the ideological and hoping part of the South African society while his mother and Mr. Macintosh represent the authorities forcing him to accept, if not believe in, the racial separation: “Don’t argue. You’re not to play with them,” his mother tells him. Mr. Macintosh, on the other hand, tries to help Tommy to believe in the racial separation (“Sit down, laddie, I want to talk to you” ). As Mr. Macintosh realises that he cannot force or even ‘sensibly’ argue Tommy to believe in his cause, he gives up and allows Dirk, Mr. Macintosh’s mixed-raced son and Tommy’s friend, and Tommy both to go to university. He does, however, not want to be reminded of this defeat and tells Dirk that “[i]f I pay your way through the University, at the end of it I’m finished with you. I never want to hear from you and you are never to come back”.

Back to “Disgrace”, it can be said that if David and his situation is representative for the post-apartheid white South African, Petrus can represent the black. His former employer is now his co-proprietor and neighbour and, through story she becomes his mistress. But his life is also troubled by the rape of Lucy, which was conducted by members of his wife’s family – representing the problems and criminality facing most black South Africans today. Further, the frustration of the black population, in 1999 yet to feel any practical effect of the cease of apartheid, is also described in the rape. Through David’s eyes, “it was history speaking through [the rapists] a history of wrong. […] It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down from the ancestors.” Literature analyst Harald Leusmann takes this analysis further when he suggests that Lucy sees the rape as “the price she must pay in order to be allowed to stay and continue an undignified life.” David and Lucy are punished for the history of their race, as many “former colonizers, who to an extent are natives too” are in South Africa today. “In the end, there is only disgrace, and the narrator seems to come to the conclusion that there is no longer a place for white people in South Africa.” This, in essence, is Coetzee’s pessimism; it is argued through the terms ‘white man’s guilt’ or ‘disgrace’ , both which refer to the same. The disgrace is personal, so is the debt that each white man owes each black man. Coetzee himself solved the problem the same way as David solves it, by moving. “[Coetzee’s] move to Australia can be interpreted as an attempt to establish a new identity as an Australian writer carrying a lesser ‘historical guilt’ than the South African he once was, because the Australian aboriginal population is in the minor,” Leusmann suggests.

From a modern European point of view, Coetzee’s pessimism is arguably wrong in two assumptions, the first being that post-apartheid white South Africans should feel the personal disgrace. Lucy feels disgrace not in the rape, but towards the men who raped her: “The men will watch the newspapers, listen to the gossip. They will read that they are being sought for robbery and assault, nothing else. […] Too ashamed, they will say to each other, too ashamed to tell […].” The second wrong assumption is that the white population is indebted to the black population, even after apartheid has been ended. It is hardly a normative statement that the whites hold an unfair advantage in an economic or materialistic sense, and that the conditions of living should be levelled in South Africa – but the debts between the groups is of a personal nature no more than the debts between political Europe and political Africa. Over all, however, the underlying concept that there is no longer a place for white people in South Africa may be right and the impacts of his pessimism are evident. Through “Disgrace” and the life of its author, we find that the lack is not only of an easy answer, but of an answer at all: Both fictional David and non-fictional Coetzee chose to leave South Africa. Also Bonnici suggests this:

Moving on, there is a parallel between the animals that Bev Shaw, friend of Lucy and later David’s mistress, and David put down in the animal care centre and the abuse of nonwhites during the apartheid-period. The symbolism of this parallel also suggests how to handle the post-apartheid situation:

Analyst Charles Saravan commented on this aspect:

These quotes read together indicate that while nonwhites are of the same order of creation as whites, the animals are not. “Disgrace” mentions a major difference between the suffering animals and the post-apartheid black population: “On the list of the nation’s priorities, animals come nowhere” . During apartheid, however, animals and nonwhites were of the same order of creation, one that was below that of the whites. The symbolism in this aspect of the book is somewhat subtle but nonetheless clear: White South Africans should be friendly with non-whites not because they feel guilt or fear, but because they enjoy each other’s company.

Although Coetzee rarely engages in political writing, elements like the one above may be revealing his political viewpoints. Another outlet for his frustration seems to be the committee that judges David for his sexual relationship with Melanie, one of his students, a young, coloured girl, which can be seen as a symbol of the Coetzee’s disapproval of the new, post-apartheid government. Both the post-apartheid government and the committee judge the white man for his actions and try to force him into doing as they wish. Ironically, the committee tries to take on the ‘white man’s burden’ when helping David; the racial situation in South Africa has been reversed:

The shift of power is described more explicitly later in the novel: “Petrus needs him [David] not for advice on pipefitting or plumbing but to hold things, to pass him tools – to be his handlanger.” It has become the white man helping the black; the black man possesses the knowledge and power, the white man simply follows his orders. This, it is implied, is the future of South Africa. David feels this not only through the committee and when helping Petrus, but also when he is displaced from teaching literature to teaching communication. The irony is clear: David, a man whose life is troubled by his very lack of communicative skills is employed to teach communication.

It is therefore that David, alike Tommy, feels as Lessing describes it “that he had left a golden age of freedom behind, and now there was a new country of restrictions and time-tables.” For Tommy, this refers not only to the transition from child to adult, but also to discovering the racial differences. As a young child, Tommy shows few signs of racism, but as he grows older, he becomes aware of the racial situations in his country (“Why is Dirk yellow and not dark brown like other kaffirs ?” ). Later, Tommy embodies the properties of modern-day white adult South Africans, raised in the belief “that his growing manhood depended on his not playing with the black people. [But] he did not believe a word of it, not really.” Still, he is forced to accept this new world; racist colonialism and apartheid-South Africa. This world becomes the source of his frustration and a duiker he buys from Dirk becomes both an outlet for this frustration (“‘Why?’ shouted Tommy, in the anger of his misery. ‘Why won’t it drink? Why? Why?’” ) and symbolic of his loss of freedom. As the buck slowly dies, Tommy is gradually loosing his freedom. This loss of freedom, ultimately Tommy being sent to boarding-school, also leads to his introduction to the white man’s burden: “‘I got you free,’ said Tommy, boasting” to Dirk after he had donated money to Dirk’s family and got Dirk a week off work for them to play. Tommy also takes on the task of educating Dirk and he argues Dirk’s cause with Mr. Macintosh. It is evident that Tommy sees it as his responsibility to help the nonwhites and especially Dirk.

Tommy, with his nonwhite friends, embodies the feelings of the suppressed and not those of his own race, the free. David, on the other hand, is acclimatised to the apartheid South African white way of life and to his job as a professor – both situations occupy power. The almost simultaneous loss of these powers has a major impact on David who suddenly finds that he is failure. In the end of the novel, he admits his failures as Lucy tells him that she is pregnant: “What will it entail, being a grandfather? As a father, he has not been much of a success, despite trying harder than most. As a grandfather he will probably score lower than average too.” That the child is that of the rapist or the child of a nonwhite is less important to David than his own failures.

The most evidently parallel characters in the context of the racist analysis of the works is not David and Tommy, rather it is Lucy and Tommy. Both characters accept, and even encourage black power, but are physically hindered on the way; Lucy through the rape and Tommy in the fights with Dirk. In the end, they both find that the Negroes they have helped – Petrus and Dirk respectively – are just as clever as themselves. In this analysis Coetzee’s pessimism is evident in Lucy’s failure, which will be discussed more thoroughly later, and Lessing’s optimism in Tommy’s success in getting Dirk to university.

It is also noteworthy how different characters in the two novels view other races, and other people in general, differently. David tends to have a realistic and straight-forward view of the Africans. He thinks of Petrus, very accurately, as “solid, dependable Petrus, with his two wives and moderate ambitions,” even when he only a little earlier “has begun to dislike [him].” Mr. Macintosh is also impressively realistic in his portrayal of nonwhites. For example, it is said of Dirk that “[h]e was the very image of an aspiring clerk: that form of humanity which Mr. Macintosh despised the most.” Even though it is young, aspiring people he dislikes, Mr. Macintosh does not see the value in a nonwhite’s life: “And if someone’s head got in the way of falling buckets or trucks, then there were plenty of black heads and hands for the hiring. And if [parts of the mine collapsed], swallowing half a dozen men – well, one can’t make omelette without breaking eggs.”

It is, in the light of these characterizations, interesting to note how the main features of the plots are quite similar. There is a cross-race couple of friends, Tommy and Dirk and Lucy and Petrus, who are hindered in their friendship by a non-communicating white authority that has lost its status and seeks the countryside to hide. The comparison draws a parallel between Mr. Macintosh and David who are quite different, but the parallel implies less of their characters than of their significance in each story.

Continuing the characterizations, it is interesting to see who is the most racially aware, and we soon find that it must be Dirk. That may be because he is a half-caste and thus suffers the most under the racist system: “‘white people don’t like us half-castes. Neither do the blacks like us. No one does,” Dirk says of his situation. Still, Dirk is by law considered to be a native: “‘anyone who lives with and after the fashion of the natives is a native. Therefore I’m a native, and I’m not entitled to go to school with the half-castes.” On the contrary, Lucy must represent the most racially indifferent person in these works. She accepts the ‘invitation’ to Petrus’ family in return for protection, and she concludes that “perhaps that is a good point to start from again. […] To start at ground level. With nothing. […] No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. […] Like a dog.” Once more we see the apartheid racial structures turned around, but Lucy does not mind as long as she can stay in her house. Also her speech to David about equality is an impressively accurate description of the conflict between the apartheid and the post-apartheid mindset, especially considering that it is about their personal, father-daughter relationship and not about apartheid:

This draws up the conclusion to Lucy’s character. When she decides to let post-apartheid South Africa do with her as it wishes, she pulls David with her: The novel ends with David giving up the dog he has saved for some time, “the young dog […], the one who likes music, the one who, given half a chance, would already have lolloped after his comrades into the clinic building [where he, David, killed both its comrades and itself]”. This dog, happy and naïve, symbolises David’s hope. Once it dies he realises that there is no room for him in South Africa anymore. Alike Lucy, he has decided to try to start again, but unlike Lucy, he wants to sell the house and move away from the disgrace in South Africa – perhaps to Holland. Lucy has, as we have already seen, accepted and incorporated the disgrace into her life.

Both David and Lucy seek new beginnings, but the decisions are based on losses rather than victories. In “The Antheap”, on the other hand, the new beginning comes in the form of a victory; both Tommy and Dirk are sent to university, racial equality has succeeded. It was Lessing’s conclusion and Lessing’s optimism that some day apartheid would end, but only after a battle between ideologies. Tommy and Dirk fulfil the role President DeKlerk and ANC leader and later president Nelson Mandela had in the early 1990’s South Africa. Forty years after the publication of “Five” Lessing’s optimism came true.

The above discussion has made evident the ways in which these authors use symbolism, characterizations and descriptions to portray racism and their respective contemporary South African society and furthermore how their utilization of these literary devices supports their respective views on this racism and society. Lessing’s short story does not disguise its purpose; the racism and inequality in South Africa is explicitly described and characters and their relationships are clearly symbolic. The descriptions of the setting, at times described in great detail, illustrate the differences very well and Dirk and Tommy’s friendship efficiently expresses her hopes and optimism.

On the other hand, Coetzee’s use of subtle symbolism in David’s situation and the somewhat more explicit symbolism rested in some of his characters, for example Petrus representing a new social strata in post-apartheid South Africa, shows us his political and personal views: Coetzee’s pessimism. Also his crude humour and irony, for example uncommunicative David teaching communication, helps to depict a society falling apart. Ultimately, he concludes, the lack is not of an easy answer, but of an answer at all: Both fictional David and non-fictional Coetzee chose to leave South Africa.

In “The Antheap”, on the other hand, Lessing can draw her optimistic conclusion because the underlying problems in Coetzee’s time, apartheid and the post-apartheid struggle for rights and equality have not yet happened. Lessing’s optimism describes an earlier epoch of the South African society than does Coetzee’s pessimism. Ultimately, the two views presented through these works are not conflicting but, in fact, interdependent in the sense that they describe two chronologically following stages of South African society.