SIX FEET OF THE COUNTRY, MIDNIGHT CHILDREN

Analysis of Nadine Gordimer’s ‘Six Feet of the Country’

Apartheid: An Afrikaans term meaning ‘separation; used in South Africa(Policy of separate development) for the policy initiated by the Nationalist Government after 1948.

Theoretically, the establishment of the Bantustans was supposed to provide a solution to the racial tension of South Africa by providing a series of designated territories or homelands in which the different races could develop separately within the state. But since the white minority retained for themselves the bulk of the land, and virtually all the economically viable territory, including the agriculturally rich areas and the areas with mining potential, it was in practice a means of institutionizing and preserving white supremacy.

The policy of segregation(Group Areas Act) extended to every aspect of society, with separate sections in public transport, public seats and many other facilities. Further segregation was maintained b the use of ‘Pass Laws’ which required non-whites to carry a pass that identified them, and which, unless it was stamped with a work permit, restricted their access to white areas. Apartheid becomes an archetypal term for discrimination and prejudice for late twentieth century global culture.

            Gordimer’s writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Virtually all of Gordimer’s works deals with themes of love and politics, particularly concerning race in South Africa. Always questioning power relations and truth, Gordimer tells stories of ordinary people, revealing moral ambiguities and choices. Her characterization is nuanced, revealed more through the choices her characters make than through their claimed identities and beliefs. Gordimer seems to understand her coloured characters as readily as her white and penetrates into them as deeply as possible.

The consequences of apartheid forms the central theme. Gordimer writes with intense immediacy about the extremely complicated personal and social relationships in her environment. At the same time, her literary works gives profound insights into the historical process and helps to shape the process in the minds of her readers. The inferiority of Black people during this time is a big issue that is addressed in this story. In 1948, the apartheid system was created to categorize people into different racial groups. The whites, the coloured, the Indians and the Africans were the four main races that existed in South Africa. The white minority adopted oppression as a tool to control the coloured racial groups in South Africa. The apartheid system failed to acknowledge the identity, livelihood and the rights of individuals. This short story illustrates these issues by conveying to the readers, examples of oppression. She accomplished this by depicting the climax from the daily lives of the oppressed. Many Asian and Black population were stripped of their identity during the apartheid system.

The title-story tells of a black who has travelled hundreds of miles from his native Rhodesia, to start a new life in Johannesburg, where there is the promise of work. Tragically, however he dies, as do many of the natives, who struggle under the harsh circumstances. The man’s family and people plan to provide a proper burial, but their meager means cannot provide a proper grave: ‘Six feet of the country’.

The story concerns a single event in the lives of a recently transplanted urban couple on their farm just outside Johannesberg. One night, the husband(also the narrator) is called to their servant’s quarters under the ruse that one of the servant children is sick. What he finds is the dead body of a young man. It turns out, the young man is the brother of one of the workers, but an illegal immigrant from Pretoria who took sick along the perilous journey to find his way to what he hoped would be a better life.

As the story continues, the reader begins to realize just what this narrator is really about; as he deals with the death as well as his wife’s reaction to it and then struggles with his responsibility to act on behalf of his workers when they must confront the South-African bureaucracy to arrange a proper burial for the young man. Amazingly, Gordimer gets right inside this white man’s persona and manages in just a few short pages, to slice apartheid South Africa open and exposes its lopsided workings.

A young Black labourer walks from Rhodesia to find work in South Africa, where he has family who are employed on a weekend farm, the illegal immigrant becomes ill and dies. There ensues a prolonged entanglement with the authorities, who insist on having the body so that it can be examined and the bureaucratic requirements for a statement of the cause of death can be fulfilled. With great reluctance, the family surrenders the body. When atlast the casket is returned to the farm for burial, they discover that the body in it is that of a stranger. In the course of spinning out a plot about the fate of a corpse, Gordimer provides a great insight into the lives of the farm labourers, the proprietors, and the police official, and she also reveals the relative inability of the labourers to deal with illness and the bureaucracy.

With amazing range and knowledge, Gordimer reveals the intricacies of individual lives and on the historical and political forces that shape them.  While the actual story could not be more simpler, Gordimer cleverly infuses its bareboned plot with historical/cultural significance and the mournful notes of martial discord: “When Johannesburg people speak of ‘tension’, they don’t mean hurrying people in crowded streets, the struggle for money, or the general competitive character of city life. They mean the guns under the white men’s pillows and the burglar bars on the white men’s windows. They mean those strange moments on city pavements when a black man won’t stand aside for a white man”.

A young couple from Johannesburg who in an effort to save their marriage buys a cottage in the country. Instead of finding peace, however they find that the country divides them even further as the young wife becomes involved in the efforts of a Black labourer to give his brother, a refugee from Rhodesia(now Zimbabwe), a proper funeral. The racial tension  causes difficulties in the relationship between the master and servant.  In her interview with Mr.Braun, Gordimer talks eloquently about the part that politics plays in her writing: it’s not especially conscious but it’s inevitable. “Even in their most intimate relationships, Gordimer says, people are influenced by the kind of society they live in and by the attitudes of society. Apartheid she says further, which places a person of one colour in authority over a person of another colour, carries over into personal relationships that have nothing to do with, perhaps crossing the colour bar.”

Postcolonial Reading of Rushdie’s ‘Midnight Children’

Home:

     Saleem Sinai, born at the moment of India’s independence from British rule, searches for his true identity and home in a time when the nation is largely divided along lines of religion, language and politics. Salman  Rushdie writes about the versions of ‘home’.

The Relationship between Personal Life and History:

     ‘Midnight’s Children’ explores the ways in which history is given meaning through the telling of individual experience ( Fiction about fiction).

     For protagonist Saleem Sinai, born at the instance of India’s independence from Britain, his life becomes inextricably linked with the political, national and religious events of his time. Not only does Saleem experience many of the crucial historical events, but he also claims some degree of involvement in them. Saleem expresses his observation that his private life has been remarkably public, from the very moment of his conception. In a broader sense, Rushdie is relating Saleem’s generation of ‘Midnight Children’ to the generation of Indians with whom he was born and raised. Saleem reiterates throughout the novel that “to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world”. This idea underscores the link Rushdie establishes in this novel between the personal and the public. Saleem equates his life path with that of Indian’s path as a new nation, and draws upon many metaphors to illustrate this connection. Shri Ramram Seth correctly predicts the life events of Saleem Sinai, and within Saleem’s narration, he makes several allusions to future events in his life.

     Rushdie separates Saleem’s relationship to national and political events into the four categories of “passive-metaphorical”, “passive literal”, “active metaphorical” and “active literal”.  In so doing, he emphasizes the idea that while Saleem’s personal life has largely correlated to the path of India as a nation, he has the unfortunate position of remaining powerless to alter the course of events. His powerlessness causes him frustration and ultimately profound disillusionment.

The lives of the midnight children foreground the link between personal lives and national history. Emphasizing their role as members of a specific generation and citizens of a specific nation, perhaps even above issues of their biological parentage, Rushdie writes, “The children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. It can happen, especially in a country which is itself a sort of dream.” This  ‘dream’ refers to what Rushdie regards as an impossible or very difficult task of forming a new nation out of a land with countless languages and multiple religions and sects – Rushdie’s skeptical outlook on India’s future.

The Fragmentation of Identity:

    The reader of ‘Midnight’s Children’ must piece together Saleem Sinai’s narrative to extract meaning from it. As the narrative involves sudden shifts back and forth in time, as well as many instances of illusion, the reader must solve the puzzle of Saleem Sinai’s life. Similarly, the characters in the novel, in the process of their search for self-definition, must attempt to solve the puzzle of their own identities. For example, Aadam Aziz gains a familiarity with Naseem Ghani, who will one day become his wife, through a white perforated sheet. Aadam may move the hole in the sheet to examine any given area. In this way, Aadam piece together a puzzle of Naseem’s appearance.

    The role of fragmentation in the formation of identity also applies to nations, particularly to India. The fragmentation of the large British colonial territory into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, whose cultural, religious, political and linguistic traditions differ, presented a tremendously complex and intimidating task. Therefore, India’s early days as an independent nation were fraught with division and strife. Rushdie draws a comparison between India’s struggles with its neighbouring peoples and Saleem’s struggles with various family members and with the other members of the Midnight Children’s Club. Rushdie also demonstrates Saleem’s fragmentation through his actual physical mutilations, both on the school playground and under the doctor’s knife.

    In the ‘Midnight’s Children’, Rushdie uses character’s names to explore the formation of national and personal identity. Virtually all characters adopt multiple names throughout their lives, inorder to reflect emotional, political, or religious transformations. Mumtaz transforms into Ahmed Sinai represents one such incident.

     Padma represents the listerner in a novel which is strongly influenced by a tradition of oral literature. The narrator Saleem repeatedly speaks directly to Padma, and even includes her critiques on, and reactions to, the narration. Rushdie often inserts parentheses to indicate these interactions with Padma. Her role in the novel also addresses the difficulties and joys of the creative process, in a novel in which the recording of history and lives takes on such importance.

       Saleem searches to understand his own fragmented identity. Because Saleem is the child of multiple nations, religions, languages and political parties, he has a conflicted and often contradictory sense of self. Saleem acknowledges his inheritance of some of his grandfather’s personality traits and tendencies, despite the fact that he has no biological relation to him. Second, he addresses both of the men’s uncertainty regarding their faith. Third, the theme of fragmentation manifests itself in this description of the “cracks” in his body. These cracks represent the failure of an effort to formulate identity or meaning.

The Search for Parental Figures:

     Over the course of his life Saleem identifies many people as his parents. His biological parents Wee Willie and Vanita are in some ways the least important of all his ‘parents’. Many different individuals metaphorically father Saleem; the novel even suggests that time or history fathers Saleem. Each time Saleem finds a new father, he experiences a rebirth of sorts. This multiple metaphorical parentage also relates to the feelings of homelessness and exile as well to the fragmentation of identity and memory that plague Saleem throughout the novel. After its liberation from English rule, India has arrived at a type of ‘double parentage’; that is, both native and colonial traditions have shaped the nation.

The unreliability of Historical and Biographical Accounts and Measures of Time:

    Salman Rushdie does not always accurately recount the events in recent Indian History during the course of ‘Midnight’s Children’. At times, he makes mistakes on details or dates, but he makes them intentionally, inorder to comment on the unreliability of historical and biographical accounts. For example, Saleem informs the reader that an old lover of his shot him through the heart; however, in the very next chapter he confesses to having fabricated the circumstances of his death.

     Rushdie has cleverly designed the chapters of ‘Midnight’s Children’. He refers to each of the thirty chapters as a jar of chutney. The process of “chutnification” refers to the process of “pickling”, or writing about historical and life events. The thirty chapters also correspond to the number of years Saleem has lived, although the narration does not progress linearly.

     The theme of the unreliability of measures of time, recurs throughout the novel. The illusions of the jungle make time an element on which one must not depend, and the jungle environment comes to symbolize the dream world and this sense of faulty time.

     The spittoon which represents a vessel in which memories of family and national history rest, remains Salem’s only sense of security.

    During Saleem’s voyage back to Bombay, he discovers anger. Saleem’s anger results from his repeatedly disillusioning experiences and the frustration he experiences in his attempts to achieve some concrete sense of identity, nationhood, or parentage. As the novel progresses and his life does not seem to improve but rather disintegrates before his eyes.

Magic Realism:

    The term means the inclusion of any mythic or legendary material from local written or oral cultural traditions in contemporary narrative.

    The material so used is seen to interrogate the assumptions of western, rational, linear narrative and to enclose it within an indigenous metatext, a body of textual forms that recuperate the pre-colonial culture. It has become a catch-all for any narrative devise that does not adhere to western realist conventions.