The Reflection of the Apartheid in

Nadine Gordimers Short Story

What were you dreaming? is a short story written by the literature Nobel prize
winner Nadine Gordimer. Nadine Gordimer was a South African white woman who lived
most of her life during the apartheid period. The apartheid was a system of racial
segregation that was enforced through legislation by the National Party (ruling party of
South Africa from 1948 to 1994). This system established full control of the country by
the white people, and a reduction of the black people's rights (which were the majority of
the population). In What were you dreaming? the author transports us masterfully back
to South Africa in the apartheid era through the clever telling of a hitchhiker's
experience.
In the story, there is a man is waiting for someone to give him a lift to the next
place because he has to travel for a long time to the place he works, while he is waiting
he explains that even hitchhiking whilst being a black man is quite a difficult task on that
day and age. Whenever a black person offers to give you a ride they ask you for money
in exchange as if they were providing a taxi service, after all making a living as a black
man is difficult enough, and the whites on the other hand rarely stop because they fear
getting robbed or killed in places like that, and in fact they have after all some reason to
fear, as with anything there are good black people and bad black people, the key here is
that whites are not usually capable to tell the difference, and the necessity created by
being driven out of their homes and limiting their livelihoods must have certainly made
more and more black people resort to crime as a way of making ends meet; this of
course meant that there was some resentment from the black people towards the
whites and vice-versa. When a car stopped to pick him up, he was shocked because
the people inside the car where whites. It just so happens that said hitchhiker is a Cape
Colored man who chances a ride with the most unlikely couple he could've found, an
elderly but energetic white woman with a compassionate nerve for black people and a
British tourist being taught about the harsh realities of life during such times through
direct contact. During the ride, a conversation takes place between the three of them
that brings out some facts about the apartheid, how this system affects the quality of life
of people that live within it, and the very different perspectives the participants have with
regards of life during that period. The contrast is jarring at best and very soon hints of a
deep mistrust between them begin to become apparent through the conversation, not
because they mistreat each other in anyway, but because of deep settled prejudices
imposed by the societal dynamics of the times.
As was expressed previously, the forceful separation of blacks and whites is just
an evidence of the apartheid and its only to be expected that mischaracterizations and
wrongful impressions are going to arise. Not only did the whites objectively took
everything of importance from the blacks, but through the segregation, myths and
prejudice started to form that wouldnt have arisen in a truly integrated society. Another

evident aspect of the apartheid exposed in this scene is that black were conditioned to
always treat whites with respect while diminishing their own importance, this is shown
by how every hitchhiker the couple lets in the car talk to them in a submissive manner.
For the blacks, they are servants and the whites are the masters, as said in the story
"Some grin with pleasure and embarrass him by showing it the way theyve been taught
is acceptable, invoking him as baas and master when they get out and give thanks". At
some point, the colored man starts to tell his story and how he lives; during his story he
tells some lies and omit some truth, he did that because he thought that they would
dislike him if they knew the whole truth. He told them the horrible conditions in which
him and the rest of the black population are forced to live with, how they dont earn
enough money to live so they have to travel for days to a job with better payments. All
the things that he told them, even if some werent the whole truth, were all facts of how
every black or colored person lived in South Africa.
Afterwards, the colored man falls asleep and the two whites start talking. At this
point, Gordimer changed the point of view of the story from the colored man to the
couple of whites, a white Englishman and a white South African woman. The woman
explains some parts of how the apartheid system worked, and as she explains it is
noticeable that she doesnt agree with it although shes not going to do anything to
change it. The Englishman is trying to understand what is going on in that country and
she tries to explain it, they agree in some things but they dont share the responsibility
of having perpetrated the system, as said in the story But encounters along the road
teach him more than her history lessons, or the political analyses in which they share
the same ideological approach although he does not share responsibility for the
experience to which the ideology is being applied. She explains that the country is
unevenly divided in three groups: whites, blacks and colored. The black and the colored
people have little to no rights and they cannot coexist with the whites, nevertheless the
colored people have better places to live in than the black but still they live under
extreme poverty. She also explained that when it all started, the blacks and the colored
were moved out of their homes to places of deplorable conditions.
There are so many differences between the Englishman and the colored man,
the level of education, the color of their skin and the way they live. This differences let
us understand why at the end of the story the colored man does not want to tell the
Englishman what he was dreaming about. He did not want to tell him because he knows
that what he is dreaming about is not important to the Englishman and yet it means the
world. He is dreaming about what he sees in billboards and in newspapers, simple and
menial things that might not be of great importance to those who have them. But in
those menial things lies the inescapable truth of being a human being, we crave dignity
and thats what our protagonist is dreaming about, the dignity of being able to have all
those things, the dignity of comfort and of being considered an equal. In a sense he fails
to mention that not because of embarrassment, that would be but a small part of it. He
withholds the truth about what he has dreamt because admitting that he wants those
things is in a sense admitting that he considers himself an equal, that he wishes he was
entitled to the same rights, but he would not, in fact he could not admit himself to that
because that itself would be an affront to his position in society, in his view it could be

displeasing to these gracious masters that have been so kind to him. And let us not
forget he still requires one more thing from them, an act of pity, some sympathy for him
in the form of just enough money to get home. And with that we arrive at what is
perhaps the greatest tragedy of segregation, apartheid or whatever hateful divisory
system in our history, the fact that each party begins to interiorize and assimilate their
roles, so those oppressed start to believe themselves inferior while the privileged
believe to be entitled to their privilege. The system settles in, inactivity takes its toll and
the phrase its like its always been begins to resemble something horrible yet mundane.