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The Foreseen and the Seen: White Community’s Marauding Bearing towards their Own Kind in The Late Bourgeois World

Corresponding Author : Dr. Muhammad Alamgir Toimoor (mtoimoor@gmail.com)

Authors : Dr. Muhammad Alamgir Toimoor (mtoimoor@gmail.com)

Keywords : Elizabeth, Max, bourgeois, white supremacy, communist movement

Abstract :

 Elizabeth Van Den Shandt, the narrator of Gordimer’s novel The Late Bourgeois World, depicts Max, her ex-husband in such way that it unravels a latent aspect of South Africa’s white community i.e. even if anyone of their own kind differs in complying with the long-held tradition then they are as ruthless to the deviant as they are to the black. At the outset of the fiction, it is indicated that this kind of outcome on Max’s part, who was put to trial for an unexploded bombing plot at a South African government office, has already been expected. This immediately raises the reader’s curiosity about knowing what has been foreseen. The whole fiction then becomes an account to explore this foreseen issue through the eyes of Elizabeth that is proportionate to the consequence, which is seen. Max, the only son of a die-hard bourgeois family, joins the communist party in South Africa by de-classing himself; he then rips off all his ties with white-mores, and places himself on the borderline in-between the white and the black. Max’s character drawn against the backdrop of South Africa’s communist movement, which is heavily impacted by and intertwined with racial discrimination, sheds light on the stringent and marauding nature of the white rulers. His action, as Elizabeth depicts, is looked upon by the ruling class more as an insurrection against white supremacy than an ineffectual class-struggle. The author of this paper has tried to bring into light that Elizabeth seems to have projected that Max, as an avant-garde, appears to have not fully grasped the extent of such predatory psyche so deeply ingrained in the heart of the white South Africa. The author further focuses on the issue that Elizabeth’s personal telling shows that it is not Max’s involvement with the communists that has goaded him to such an end, instead, it is his renouncing of the white supremacy and breaking up with the white men and power structure that have brought such an end to him. 

Published on December 31st, 2020 in Vol 31, No.2, Social Sciences