Clara Calhoun

SL English

Ms. Reist

October 25, 2020

The Role Of A Parent

Nadine Gordimer was a South African author who predominantly wrote literature

pertaining to the South African Apartheid. Of her many short stories written through a variety of

different lenses and viewpoints, two specific ones stand out as narratives that are impacted

directly by the actions of parents towards their children. Her 1975 work “Country Lovers” and

her piece “Once Upon A Time” from 1989 both highlight the extent to which race impacts

family dynamics and parental roles in their children’s lives. The stories take on two significantly

different perspectives, but both show the effects that racially charged societies can impact

parents, and as a byproduct, their children. Summed up, the global issue present in these works is

how race can impact the roles people play in a family and how parental relationships correlate

with race and status and how personal identity (through the lens of race) impacts parenting styles

and the way parents interact with and view their children. Both stories indicate that this is a

prevalent theme throughout by featuring the death (or presumed death) of the children near the

end of the stories and the racially motivated actions of the parents that lead up to their respective

deaths.

The premise of “Country Lovers” surrounds the relationship between a white boy and a

black girl who grew up together on a farm. As children, Thebedi (the girl) and Paulus (the boy)
played together when Thebedi did not have slave responsibilities. Although they grew up in very

different households, they never lost touch (Thebedi being the only slave that Paulus continued

to maintain a relationship with after he began attending school). As they grew older, Paulus

began to pursue Thebedi, who seemed to fall in love with him. After an avid, lengthy love affair

between the two of them, Thebedi is arranged into a marriage by her parents with another black

farmworker. After moving in together and having their first child, however, it is made very clear

that the child is Paulus’ child, not her husband’s. Upon returning home after some time away

from the farm, Paulus is made aware of the child, and proceeds to visit Thebedi and interrogate

her about the baby. Soon, after, Paulus kills the baby while Thebedi waits outside her house,

likely aware of what is going on behind the door. The story emulates the ideals of a romance

story, but takes a sharp twist when the baby is abruptly murdered. However, there is significant

foreshadowing to the brokenness in the relationship between the two main characters. The racial

differences drive them apart, and the slave to master relationship between black and white people

in this time was prevalent even in their mutual romantic relationship. For example, at one point

in the story after Paulus has established that he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with

Thebedi (a controlling one, but a relationship nonetheless), the narrator makes it clear that every

time they meet up is dictated by Paulus. Thebedi doesn’t seem to have any problem being

submissive to Paulus in the relationship, but we can see later how easily it can become abusive

when Paulus kills their child as Thebedi waits outside the house, aware (at least to some extent)

of what is happening inside. Despite her love for her child, she is driven by fear., even shown by

how she never tells Paulus that the baby is his, even though she is very aware, and by how she

reacts after the baby is found to be fully dead by not telling anyone that Paulus was the one who

murdered her (she only revealed this to the public much later in the story). Although throughout
the story their relationship is painted as a sweet love story, the underlying theme of power in the

relationship provides readers with a new, darker perspective on how race impacted identity in

this time. The struggle to conform to racial prejudices impacted parents so significantly in the

Apatheid, which Gordmier captures when Paulus says ‘“I feel like killing myself’” and

“Thebedi’s eyes [begin] to glow, to thicken with tears. For a moment there was the feeling

between them that used to come when they were alone down at the river-bed. He walked out.”

Another Gordimer short story, written over a decade after “Country Lovers,” shares an

astonishing amount of similarities to it. “Once Upon A Time” also focuses on a couple, but this

one is happily married with a child. Unlike Thebedi and Paulus, both the wife and the husband

are implied to be white. Although it is never explicitly stated, the indirect characterization helps

the reader understand the privilege and wealth of this family. From the description of their house

to the way the family views poorer people, their financial stability is made clear. There is

significantly less tension in their relationship, and in comparison to Thebedi and Paulus, much of

this can be inferred to be as a result of them being the same race. Their greeting-card family

exterior is broken at the end of the story when their son is brutally killed (or at least intensely

injured) by a barbed wire fence.

Ultimately both deaths are caused as a direct result of the parents themselves. In

“Country Lovers,” Paulus kills the baby in order to protect himself from the shaming that would

come once word got out that he had a sexual relationship with a black girl, and Thebedi doesn’t

stop him because of how she has been trained since birth to follow orders from her white male

“superiors.” In “Once Upon A Time,” the parents love their child and in no way try to kill him,

but he ends up mangled in barbed wire that the parents planted to protect their house from

robbers. But in the story, these “robbers” are pretty heavily implied to be people of color in
society where black people are outcasts. The people they are so terrified of never actually

threaten their safety in the story, but word of mouth convinces them that their lives are in

immediate danger without the necessary safety precautions for their house. Throughout, the

family becomes more and more paranoid, hence their protection becomes more and more

intense, until they eventually resort to “Dragon Teeth,” or barbed wire looped around the top of

the brick wall gate. This can be interpreted as symbolism for the defenses they put up around

their racial stigmas, and how easily their prejudices can ruin their children. The ugly barriers

they put up to protect their son ended up being the death of him.

In conclusion, Gordimer’s stories focus on the way people interact with each other in

family settings, specifically in parent/child relationships, and how this is impacted by peoples’

race and their racial backgrounds. The vivid imagery used and symbolism throughout conveys

her themes beautifully and is a powerful reflection of our society and the world she accepted as

truth as she grew up during the Apartheid.