Introduction This essay intends to explore the way in which the relationship between literature and historical context

appears reflected in Julys People (1981), a novel by one of South Africas most worldrenowned writers: Nadine Gordimer. In order to fulfil this purpose, we shall first of all present the historical backdrop against which Gordimers literary career has developed for so many years. The racial segregationist movement of apartheid led many South African intellectuals to use their writings as powerful weapons against a system they did not believe in. Nadine Gordimers strong commitment to this intellectual struggle has permeated most of her novels, short stories and critical essays, to such a degree that some of her works were banned during the apartheid regime. It should be noted, however, that despite her social realism in depicting the plight of black people under this unfair system, Nadine Gordimer has always kept a strong sense of artistic individuality, which, as we shall see, shines through both her language and literary images. Once the historical and biographical background is set, we will then draw our attention to the nightmarish interregnum found in Julys People. In the light of the uprisings of the 1970s, the novels fictitious revolution leaves the (white) reader with a disturbing feeling about what might happen in South Africa, if the countrys black population overthrew the system of apartheid. Gordimers futuristic novel is the writers attempt to make South Africas white liberals aware of the fact that, despite their opposition to the system of apartheid, deep down they share with apartheid supporters the same racial prejudices and lack of communication with black people. Summary or Plot The novel is set during a fictional civil war in which black South Africans have violently overturned the system of apartheid. The story follows the Smales, a liberal White South African family who were forced to flee Johannesburg to the native village of their black servant, July. The novel opens the morning after an exhausting three-day trip through bush country to reach the village. July brings tea for Maureen and Bamford Smale and breakfast for their children, Victor, Gina, and Royce. After experiencing disorientation from the trip, Maureen asks her husband about their vehicle, a small truck called a bakkie. He tells her that July has hidden it. The Smales find themselves dependent on July, and July's family questions their presence in the village. He explains their situation, telling his mother and wife, Martha, about the violence in the country. They cannot, however, fully believe his account given their past experience with white dominance. To do something other than listen constantly for news on his radio, Bam Smale builds a water tank for the village. Maureen tries to read a novel, since July will not let her work, but discovers that no fiction can compete with her current situation. She then recalls her girlhood days and remembers walking home from school with her family's black servant, Lydia, who carried Maureen's school case on her head. One day, a photographer took their picture. Years later, Maureen saw the picture in a Life photograph book and for the first time questioned why Lydia was carrying her books. One night, after Bam unsuccessfully tries socializing with the villagers, Bam and Maureen are startled by July's departure as a passenger in the bakkie.

Anxious over losing the vehicle, they argue, blaming each other for their situation. Later, while standing nude in the rain, Maureen sees the bakkie return. She falls asleep that night without telling Bam about the vehicle. When July comes to their hut the next day, Bam greets him with the inappropriate authority of their former relationship. Apparently ignoring Bam's tone, July tells them he went to the shops for supplies. Though they could, they do not ask him for the keys to the bakkie. July begins to learn how to drive. When they ask him what he willdo if caught driving the vehicle, he says he will say he owns it.Later, Maureen asks Victor to retrieve July (here she mentions that she is menstruating). She returns the bakkie'skeys to July. Knowing that she does not want him to keep the keys, he makes her recall his former status as her"boy" when he kept the keys to her house. He also recalls the distrust he sensed from her at the time. Stung by hiswords, Maureen tries to defend her treatment of him and says their former relationship has ended, that he is nolonger a servant. He then shocks her by asking if she is going to pay him this month. He offers the car keys back to her, saying he worked for her for fifteen years because his family needed him to. She then retaliates by mentioning Ellen, his mistress in Johannesburg. Though feeling a hollow victory, Maureen knows July will never forgive her this transgression. He keeps the car keys. Bam kills two baby warthogs with his small shotgun. Before the hunt, he offers to let July's friend, Daniel, shoot the gun sometime. As he kills the warthogs he realizes just how different his life was and how spoiled they were (he went from shooting birds to warthogs and didn't like the difference in blood and destruction). Bam gives the larger wart-hog to the villagers and keeps the smaller (and more tender) one. Everyone joyfully feasts on the meat, an intoxicating delicacy, and Bam and Maureen make love for the first time since their journey. He wakes up in a daze and thinks the pig's blood is on his penis, then realizes it was his wife's. The scene shifts to July and his family eating the meat and talking about the Smales. July discounts Martha's worries that the white family will bring trouble. Martha recalls the times without July when he, like most men with families, worked in the city. Like the seasons, the long absences of their husbands have become an expected part of black women's lives. Gina and her friend, Nyiko, play with newborn kittens, and Maureen scolds them. Later, after they listen for news on the radio, Bam asks Maureen if she found a home for the kittens. She reveals that she has drowned them in a bucket of water. Maureen tries working with the women in the fields, digging up leaves and roots. Afterward, she goes to see July, who is working on the bakkie. July does not want to hear about the killing on the news and hopes everything "will come back all right." Maureen asks, dumbfounded, if he really wants a return to the ways things were. July asks if hunger compels her to search for spinach with the women; she replies that she goes to pass the time. As always, she feels that the workplace language they speak hinders their ability to communicate. When July says she should not work with the women, she asks if he fears she will tell his wife about Ellen. He angrily asserts that she can only tell Martha that he has always been a good servant. Maureen, frightened, realizes that the dignity she thought she had always conferred upon him was actually humiliating to him. He informs her that he and the Smales have been summoned to the chief's village. Though July has authority in his village, they still must ask the chief's permission to stay. Maureen struggles with her new subservience to July. The Smales visit the chief the next morning, afraid that the chief will force them out. The chief asks them

why they have come to his nation and asks about events in Johannesburg. He cannot believe that the white government is powerless and that whites are running from Blacks. He says that the black revolutionaries are not from his nation and that the Whites, who would never let him own a gun, will give him guns to aid in the struggle against the black attackers. He tells Bam to bring his gun and teach him how to shoot it. Outraged by this suggestion, Bam asks if the chief really intends to kill other blacks, saying that the entire black nation is the chief's nation. After further discussion, the chief allows them to stay with Mwawate (July) and says that he will visit them to learn how to shoot Bam's gun. On the return trip, July explains that the chief talks instead of acts. Furthermore, the chief, who never fought the whites, is too poor and defenseless to fight other blacks. Upon their return to their hut, Maureen and Bam speak in the phrases they had used in their former life, and these phrases cannot adequately describe their current predicament. Bam begins criticizing July's new confidence and his criticisms of the chief. Maureen says that July was talking about himself, that he will not fight for anyone and is risking his life by having the family there. Maureen suggests that they leave, making Bam confront what they both know: they have nowhere to go and no means by which to get there. With the women, Maureen clumsily cuts grass for the huts. After the cutting, July criticizes Martha for placing the grass bundles in front of the Bam and Maureen's house, where their children will ruin it. They discuss July's past and his times in the city over the last fifteen years. Rejecting July's contention that his family will move to the city once the fighting ends, Martha suggests that he stay in the village. According to Daniel, they will no longer face white restrictions, and, with his city experience, July can run his own shop. A man brings a battery-operated amplifier to the village and provides them with a night's entertainment, during which many villagers drink heavily. The Smales do not partake in the drinking but return to their hut, where they find their gun missing. With no police to help him, Bam is impotent in the face of the theft. Maureen feels humiliated for Bam. She leaves to find July, who is by the bakkie. They realize that only Daniel was absent from the party, and Maureen says July must get the gun from him. Daniel, however, has left. After July asserts that the Smales always make trouble for him, Maureen accuses July of stealing small items from her in Johannesburg. Angered, he speaks to her in his own language, and "She understood although she knew no word. Understood everything: what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others," his own people. July then informs her that Daniel has joined the revolution. She tells July that he abandoned Ellen and only wants the bakkie so he can feel important, but that, too, will become useless when his gas money runs out. After Gina goes to play with Nyiko and Bam goes with Victor and Royce to fish, a helicopter with unidentifiable markings flies over the village. Maureen fervently chases the helicopter, and the novel ends with her still running toward it and its unknown occupants, who could be either "saviours or murderers."

Themes/Symbols/Motifs

Some major themes of this novel are Racial Equality,Power(shift),Time/Memory. Lesser themes are Body and Gender Roles(marriage and fidelity). Motifs and symbols include: the Yellow Bakki, cleanliness, the huts, the radio, and the river (water in general). Critical Appreciation Nadine Gordimer wrote Julys People at a time of widespread uncertainty about the future of South Africa. The resurgence of a revolutionary consciousness in the eighties, coupled with the gruesome repression by the apartheid system after the Soweto riots, brought the final liberation of the country closer to becoming a reality, but a reality whose achievement was not going to be plain sailing. Thus, it becomes clear that Julys People was written against a backdrop of sociopolitical tension between the old system of racial segregation, which was about to die, and the future system of racial equality, which was struggling to be born. The interval between these two events is what Antonio Gramscis epigraph refers to as interregnum. The metaphorical nobodys land resulting from such a situation gives rise to a great diversity of morbid symptoms. It is precisely this diversity of morbid symptoms what Julys People is all about. In the middle of a widespread black revolt in South Africa, the privileged position formerly occupied by the whites (colonizers) is about to be taken over by the blacks (colonized). This situation leads many white families to flee their homes in their comfortable residential districts. One of these families, the Smales, find themselves forced to accept the help of their black servant, July, who offers them refuge at his mud and thatched hut village. Julys protection, together with Bams yellow bakkie (a little truck), turn out to be vital (Gordimer 1981: 6) in the Smales successful escape. The Smales are white liberals who have always been against the segregationist regime of apartheid. Being liberal, however, will not spare them the ordeal of having to suffer the consequences of such a terrible situation. To provide an example of the uselessness of the Smales liberal ideals in the novels interregnum, Bam and Maureen Smales were so confident about the immunity they thought they would be granted as white liberals, that they were extremely baffled when they were advised to withdraw all their money from the bank (Bam, in a state of detached disbelief at his action ... withdrew five thousand rands in notes Gordimer 1981: 7). By introducing the reader to this family, Nadine Gordimer attempts to highlight the difficult position many white liberal families found themselves in at that time: they might find they had lived out their whole lives as they were, born white pariah dogs in a black continent (Gordimer 1981: 8). The previous quotation may be taken as an illustration of the wide disjunction between the ideals associated with white liberalism and reality; no matter how hard they tried to slough their privilege (Gordimer 1981: 8), blacks would always regard white liberals as masters (colonizers). Referring to the notion of masters doubtlessly involves the existence of slaves. In the South-African segregationist context, it is not at all hard to identify to whom each label is assigned: masters (whites) vs. slaves (blacks). However, the interregnum the reader is confronted with in Julys People makes it difficult to maintain such division. Julys

People is, more than anything else, the fictional account of a power reversal, whereby former masters become slaves and former slaves become masters. This power reversal is closely related to the Smales growing dependence on their former servant, July. Since July was the only person they could turn to for survival, there was nothing else to do but the impossible (Gordimer 1981: 11); this was the starting point for Julys rise to power. Throughout the novel, July starts to take control of every possible aspect of the life of the Smales. From the very beginning, the reader becomes aware that July does not want the Smales to act on their own, thus depriving their everyday lives of meaning: If the children need eggs, I bring you more eggs...He smiled at the pretensions of a child, hindering in its helpfulness Thats not your work (Gordimer 1981: 96). Not being allowed to cater for themselves leads the Smales to become less independent and more subservient to Julys goodwill. The only thing that helps the Smales make some sense of their pointless lives is the radio. Desperate for outside news, the adults practically worship their radio. Bam constantly listens to the radio, frantically searching for stations broadcasting any updates on the current situation of the war. The Smales are so obsessed with this device, because it is the only link they have to the outside world from which they fled. Nevertheless, little by little, radio stations are attacked and broadcasts are made vague and less informative, if they are made at all. By the end of the novel, the only information they can get from the radio is the sounds of chaos, roaring, rending, crackling out of which the order that is the world has been won (Gordimer 1981: 124). Gordimers depiction of a reality that is gradually falling apart is clearly reflected in the previous quotation. The fragmented reality their life comes down to by the end of the novel does not come about all of a sudden. It is a gradual process that is inextricably linked to the Smales gradual loss of power. The former masters begin to lose their privilege at the very moment when they are forced to flee from their comfortable home to Julys village. This event is in turn followed by Julys learning to drive the bakkie, without the Smales consent. July is so enthusiastic about his new skill that he is very reluctant to give the keys of the car back to the Smales. Despite being so annoyed at Julys use of their car, they do not dare to ask him for the keys of the vehicle, for they know that they are now at the mercy of their former servant. At one point in the novel, July realizes that the Smales are not at all happy about him keeping their car: You dont like I must keep the keys (Gordimer 1981: 69). In the argument about the keys of the bakkie, July points out correctly that Maureen has never really trusted him to take care of the things he was asked to, while the family was on holidays. It is precisely at that moment that Maureen begins to realize that her white liberal ideology is nothing but a show. If the communication between master and servant had been better, she would have found out that July felt as any other black did under the yoke of the apartheid regime. By using the word boy and master in this exchange, July emphasizes Maureens hypocritical liberal ideals: you tell everybody you trust your good boy (Gordimer 1981: 70). Despite having been against the use of such words as boy and master for so long, this interregnum unveils the Smales real ideology. If losing their bakkie speeded up the Smales growing subservience to July, the stealing of Bams gun by Daniel brings about the final and complete reversal of roles (master-servant). Having been stripped of the only objects reminding them of their former white power (the bakkie and the gun), the Smales (particularly,

Maureen) have to face up to the fact that they will never recover their former life. Maureens resentment about this reversal of roles may be shown in the way she refers to July at the beginning of the novel: a good man (Gordimer, 1981: 32), as opposed to the way she calls him towards the middle of the novel: a moody bastard (Gordimer, 1981: 57). Maureen and Julys final row over the disappearance of the gun is of critical importance, in the sense that this passage may be regarded as the novels climax. In this passage, July, no longer willing to appear as the good loyal servant, voices all his feelings about his relationship with the Smales. The curious thing of this exchange is that July speaks to Maureen in his own native language, not in English. Surprisingly enough, Maureen understood although she knew no word. Understood everything (Gordimer 1981: 152). After so many years with July, it is only when he starts speaking in his native language that Maureen eventually becomes aware of all that he has gone through: She was not his mother, his wife, his sister, his friend, his people (Gordimer 1981: 152). In short, what July is trying to tell us is that Maureen was not the kind and benevolent white liberal who would treat her servant as a relative or a friend. Hence, it becomes clear that July feels himself as a member of hiw own black tribe, and not as part of the group of privileged white liberals, who, to a greater or a lesser extent, had also benefited from the apartheid regime. This scene ends with Maureen posing herself provocatively against the hood of the bakkie, like a model in an advertisment. Nonetheless, her physical appearance is not that of a model, but a kind of caricature of an attractive middle-aged white woman: She lurched over and posed herself, a grotesque..sweat coarsened forehead...neglected hair standing out wispy and rough (Gordimer 1981: 153). In that attitude, Maureen gathers all the irony, hurt and bafflement of someone whose former role (master) has been exploded. From what we have said so far, surely the role played by language in Julys People has not gone unnoticed. Power is related not only to political and economic superiority, but also to speech. As one might expect, those in power are always those who find themselves entitled to modulate and understand language according to their socio- political loyalties. The following excerpts will serve as an instance of linguistic power: They could assume comprehension between them only if she kept away from even the most commonplace of abstractions; his was the English learned in kitchens, factories and mines. It was based on orders and responses, not the exchange of ideas and feelings (Gordimer 1981: 96) When she didnt understand him, it was her practice to give some noncommittal sign or sound...Bam did not have this skill and often irritated him by a quick answer that made it clear...the black mans English was too poor to speak his mind (Gordimer 1981: 97) As may be remembered from the second section of this paper, those who had a high command of English were the white masters. Black South-African schools based most of their instruction either on Afrikaans or on tribal languages, consigning English to a secondary position (Afrikaans Medium Decree, 1974). While white education was aimed at obtaining white professionals (doctors, lawyers...), bantu education only intended to supply future labourers with some little instruction. Hence, it is no wonder that Gordimer refers to Julys English as that language variety

learned in kitchens, factories and mines. More often than not, the immediate consequence of such lack of linguistic competence was an uncomfortable miscommunication between masters and servants (Bam did not have this skill). It is precisely this lack of communication that challenges all the preconceptions Bam and Maureen Smales had about July. Last but not least, of paramount importance in Julys People is the role played by children. In comparison with the great pains taken by Bam and Maureen to adapt to the new situation, Roy, Gina and Victor quickly get used to Julys village. The reason for such successful adaptation on the part of the children lies in the fact that children play, while adults do not. What I mean is that the only thing children are concerned with is playing and having fun; they have not yet been contaminated with the (racial, social...) prejudices typical of adults. Their adaptation is so great that they even begin to acquire the language of the other black children. Nadine Gordimer uses the childrens relationships to cast some light on those of the adults. Bam and Maureen, as adults, are contaminated with all the values and ideas associated with white urban life in South Africa (privilege, discrimination...), whereas the children are too young to have been completely contaminated or influenced by adulthood. This dichotomy highly contributes to explaining why Bam and Maureen, unlike their children, find it so hard to become independent: her children had survived in their own ability to ignore the precautions it was impossible for her to maintain for them. (Gordimer 1981: 123) Conclusion Julys People inhabits a world where traditionally assumed roles and rules have been overturned, where relationships have become undefined, where everything, even vocabulary and language, has been called into question. In this novel, past and present, and us (whites) and them (the others: the blacks) are magnificently combined by Nadine Gordimer. This award-winning writer introduces us to a future South Africa where a lack of communication between races will continue to be a major problem. She also calls our attention to the hypocrisy underlying white liberal ideals. It seems that white South African liberals are criticized for their passivity in the anti-apartheid movement, and for failing to recognize that their material well-being owes a great deal to the discriminatory policies of apartheid. The only ray of hope in Nadine Gordimers apocalyptic prophesy of a future South Africa rests on the new generations of South African children. Gordimer probably thinks that all the children born after the overthrow of the apartheid regime will not be contaminated with the racial and social prejudices of their parents. Source: Internet