List of symbolism/ motifs

1.

Race/ color of skin

The exploitation of racial rises as propaganda to gain votes from the Black nationalist
party ZANU [Mugabe] used extravagantly provocative racial terminology, but let there
be no doubt that the vote-winning objective was well executed, (Smith 394).
2. Maps: clashing cultures/contradictions
a. Remapping Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
i. [Mugabe] ended his diatribe with the empathetic statement that he
would brook no opposition from the courts on the issue of land expropriation
and redistribution (Smith 394).
1. This is especially in terms of the Rhodesian Farmers Unions
opinions that clash with Mugabes true intentions.
b. Different tribes within Rhodesia/Zimbabwe interacting
i. They are different people with a different language, different
culture, different traditions, but nevertheless they can live and work together in
the same country, as happens in many other parts of the world, (Smith 296).
ii. I feel like this speaks to the notion in my eyes that if completely
different African tribes can live together independently within a country why:
1. Why did western colonizers not see this during the early
colonial events and stop colonizing these clearly independents tribes to
begin with.
2. Why cant westerners be able to get along with the African
tribes and learn by example the independence that they have mastered
within their own countries and continent.
3.Natural elements representing contradictions
iii. Stone Virgins: What they both know fully by heart are
contradictions. They both recall lost chances like warm fires--with fondness.
They nurture risks like tenderness they love uncertainties the way they love the
pale silence after church bells, (Vera 15)
1. The contradicting language used exposes a confusion, but
also how Vera among other citizens are trying to find beauty amid all of the
violence.
iv. Stone Virgins: Juxtaposition between wet and dry elements: ex, the
two parts of Sibasos crime of rape then murder
1. Dry/Rape: dried salt, a ferment--the dried, dead blood . . .
She is only a dot in his mind. Something that can vanish, (Vera 70)
2. Wet/Killing: This water is red, mud. My toes are sticking
together, sucking the ground. I stand still in this pool of water, with my toes
sticking together and the mud red, the red mud, the mud with blood, (Vera
74).
3. This progression uses the earth elements/landscape of the
country to contrast the bad vs the worst parts that this war has entailed, the
heavy violence of both phases makes it hard for the reader to differentiate
between the two: which is worse?