Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)

     Intro Gordimer. Brief Biography. Her importance as a voice in a land of silences. The value and also the questionable status of being a white spokesperson in a land where blacks are the subjects of struggle. A well-trained writer/artist, she weaves an acute sensibility into her extremely finely crafted descriptions and character moverments.
     We look at the craft--is it too "precious" for some of us? Here in "Keeping Fit" there is a kind of bookending of the baby bird, for whom, just as it is for the baby human, the first imperative is to breathe.
     The story then becomes very spatial, working in a relatively small geography to explore the kinds of domestic space of two very different populations. (Draw a map of the path from suburb to squatter town. the ribbon of road which separates them--part visual shield, part questionable attempt at containment (imprisonment?)) On this map there are two spaces that can be pinpointed--the butterscotch-armed woman's shack and the opulent house in which he lives.

     Read the landscape in the suburb. Security. Convenience. In the squatter camp, simply size and a chaos, an uncontained aspect.
     The glimpse into a landscape of the mind--images, not thoughts. Images of safety--the accountants mouth, the girl in the bank line and her buttocks. This reverie broken up by the cock crow from the other side of the fence (231)-last paragraph.
     Then, the eruption into consciousness, into life itself, of a terrifying sight, experience from which he had thought he would be immune for life. These moments when time seems to slow down and one remembers odd details vividly--where images take on a much more clear aspect than in the everyday moment. and almost like Alice through the looking glass, he is plunged into a terrain which has very identifiable traits (to him). (Absence of police to "stop it").

     Here is another gap between the two places--the understanding of event. When he says "I read about it" it produces the "short slap of a laugh" from even this charitable figure. When she says "the police send them" he is presented with a hitherto unacknowledged possibility.
     Irony of his trying to establish a narration of this to his family, where he becomes, in essence, the endangered hero. Top of 239 he is rehearsing how he would tell it. His tale follows with an idea of how he should have been able to tip the family--rands for his life. (Note how he begins with 100, then goes to 50 immediately).
     Stops himself with "but don't exaggerate". Wants to question his heroism, question her version of her own reality (at least in how much she would have been willing to share with him, and maybe even question her motives of Christian charity). His return to familiar terrain brings him back into the narrative mode--he knows what to tell, he knows what he wants to elicit from the story, he knows what he might have to describe, but he doesn't know how to tell such a story--there is in the whole thing something beyond his comprehension, that evades the narrative tools he has at his disposal.

     Contrast the domestic space. 235 bottom/ 242 top. There, the room in the shack was a refuge, a line between life and death. Here, there is the kind of maddeningly comfortable domesticity that lies in such stark contrast.

     And finally, in contrast to the baby chick with which it opened,, the invocation to "breathe" being common to all life, we have the baby myna bird whose efforts to continue to breathe seem to be in danger. This seems a metaphor for those who, out of sight in the shanty town, are in danger of not breathing at a far more regular rate than the people in his experience. Seems that his inept ability to deal with the situation--wanting others to do it for him so that he can chase his comfort, chase a state of unconsciousness which will allow him to expel these unpleasant new realities. This may be a critique of the white liberal in the country--having acknowledged the terror so close to home, they throw up hands to say what is to be done, or let those who are in place to do so take care of the situation--please.