Nadine Gordimer

In my opinion, Nadine Gordimer’s Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants was a sad story with a happy ending due to irony. This woman works in a garage and seems so lonely. However, it was also a funny story as well. This woman has such an elevated opinion of herself even though she continues to express how lonely she is. She says things like “I don’t know what happens to these blokes, they are married, I supposed, though their wives don’t still wear a perfect size fourteen like I do”. This is funny for two reasons, the first being that she has such a high opinion herself and the second being that size fourteen is not considered perfect. Nadine lightened up the story with this humor but it was still hard for me to avoid how lonely this woman is. I have to say that I can relate to this. I didn’t know a lot of people my first year at UC and so I made friends with a girl who I let walk all over me because I was simply just lonely. Of course, I’ve had romantic situations like hers as well but not as bad as hers. This man was clearly using her and at the end when her co-worker tells Jack that she’s not there it’s very ironic. All that time, she had trusted Jack and let him walk all over her when really her co-worker was the one who was truly there for her.

Gordinmer’s Amnesty was also a sad story! This woman and her child, Inkululeko, lived on a farm where she waited years for the lover her life (not yet husband) to return from the Island. When I read that It was called “The Island” all I could think was shutter island where the mental prison was. She spends all this time trying to prepare to see him and then realized she needed a permit to get to the island. When he finally returns home, he acts almost above all the farm people or “simple folk”. I understand that he wanted to stick with the union and do right by the farm people but this poor woman was left yet again. He never had the time to marry her, she said, but yet he had the time to impregnate her again. When he leaves, she says “Waiting. Waiting for him to come back”(1355). This just made me really sad to know that this woman had to keep waiting for him. I can relate to this a little bit. I had a boyfriend who left for college my freshman year to a really nice school. I felt like when he returned home that he was above everything here and that I was always just waiting for him to return.I knew he couldn’t wait to go back just like her lover couldn’t wait to return to the island. This was a good example of how the farm people were pictured as simple people who didn’t know much and the city people were much smarter and considered a lot more educated.

Gordimer’s Six Feet of Country was about a man his wife, Lerice. One of the farm boys got sick and passed away. They didn’t want to tell anyone because he was staying there illegally. Lerice and her husband were really upset by this because they would have never wanted anyone to ride. I think I felt the most sorry for Petrus because he had so much hope throughout the story. The narrator (the baas) was trying to help Petrus as much as he could. However, when the young boy died, the baas knew he had to report it. The authorities disposed of the body and of course the next day Petrus wanted to know where the body was to give him a proper burial. When Petrus says “my son was not so heavy” I felt incredibly uncomfortable. I knew what had happened as soon as I read that line. Of course the real body was never found and this was an incredibly unfortunate situation for all of them. The baas was outraged by how they were treated and this is a good example of just how they deal with those types of situations.