Analzing

Why I Chose Country Lovers Shiann Allshouse ENG 125: Introduction to Literature Carla McGill January 6, 2013 Why I Chose Country Lovers After reading the different works of literary from this weeks reading, the one I found to be the most interesting is the story of a forbidden love on a South African farm. The way that the author, Nadine Gordimer, words her story is amazing. The story begins by describing the love between two people of different races. As the story goes on, the woman gives birth to a baby. Her husband sees that the baby is of lighter skin. After a visit from the father of the baby, the baby ends up dead due to being poisoned. He gets found not guilty. The infant was asleep; she revealed the closed, pale, plump tiny face, with a bubble of spit at the corner of the mouth, the spidery pink hands stirring. She took off the woollen cap and the straight fine hair flew up after it in static electricity, showing gilded strands here and there. He said nothing. (Country Lovers, Nadine Gordimer) This part of the story is when the husband sees the baby for the first time. The husband tells her to get rid of the baby. When the father of the baby visits, he walks in the house and stays for a minute. He walks back out of the house. The wife thinks the baby slept through the night when in fact the baby was dead. The farm children play together when they are small, but once the white children go away to school they soon don't play together any more, even in the holidays. Although most of the black children get some sort of schooling, they drop every year farther behind the grades passed by the white children; the childish vocabulary, the child's exploration of the adventurous possibilities of dam, koppies, mealie lands, and veld—there comes a time when the white children have surpassed these with the vocabulary of boarding–school and the possibilities of inter–school sports matches and the kind of adventures seen at the cinema.(Country Lovers, Nadine Gordimer) This shows that the analytical approach used in this literary work is historical. Observing and analyzing changes over time is essential to understanding why a contemporary text is the way it is. We cannot understand our present without understanding our past. And we cannot fully imagine change without a sense of how our culture has changed over time.(Historical Analysis, Cultural Politics) When it comes to having a relationship where one person is white and the other person is of a different race, history shows that has never been acceptable. Even in today’s world, there are still many people who find having a relationship with someone of a different race is wrong. The story of the forbidden lovers shows us that some people will go the extra mile to keep it from being known that they did something that others consider wrong. Instead of standing up and fighting for what they want and love, they would rather just get rid of any type of evidence that exists. In this story, the evidence was an innocent baby. Some people do not find what happens in this story to be wrong. I find it very wrong to take the life of someone that just came into this world. Stand up for yourself when you feel you did nothing wrong, just because others find it wrong, if it feels right in your heart and you truly love someone, do not be ashamed to let the world know. References Country Lovers, Nadine Gordimer, 1975 ENG 125: Journey into Literature, R. Wayne Clugston, 2010 http://culturalpolitics.net/popular_culture/historical_analysis