Heidi Sherlock
Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, pages 83-92
In the span of three pages in Gordimer’s The Conservationist, the author describes a bleak landscape, one in which the disadvantaged black South Africans are in stark contrast to their white contemporaries. Political and social realities are at the root of this subjugation, but Gordimer examines the harsh life that surrounds the people, and the imagery she uses points to a people also at odds with the wind that blows across the land. It becomes clear that Gordimer intends to use the wind as a metaphor for the political and social struggles in the country.
In several instances, the wind is described as a potent force. It causes clothing to be “moulded against their bodies or bloated away from them” (84). In this instance it is characterized as a shaping influence. The wind, in August, is “strong enough to cart-wheel sheets of board and send boxes slamming over and over” (84). Life in this land is visually busy and the refuse of man is a frequent projectile. An ever present source of irritation, the wind causes people at bus stops to “cover their mouths with woolen scarves against the red dust; so do the women who sit at their pitches selling their oranges or yellow mealies roasting on braziers” (84). The wind blows across the land and carries dust and garbage with it. An unrelenting power, the wind is in constant opposition to the people and it magnifies the desperation of their poverty. The merciless wind is not the only source of irritation and impression. The feet, legs and hands of the scavengers are “coated grey with ash” (84). The people there have become covered by the land; it clings and sticks to them as an endless reminder of its unalienable power. Scavengers in the dump “have seen an ash-covered forefinger the size of their own dipping into a sardine- tin under whose curled-back top some oil still shone” (84). Nothing appears to be beyond the reach of the wind driven dust and dirt. Or is there? Some members of the community, presumably non blacks wore “white caps …wonderful watches and rings” and nurses uniforms were “clean and stiff as paper” (85). This contrast in cleanliness and therefore untouchability by the wind seems to follow along ethnic lines. As a final picture of insult we are given an image of schoolchildren on their way home. As they walked, “the dirt road gathered itself ahead and behind, rolling up its surface into a great charge of dust coming at them” and at the approach of a car, “they were whipped into turmoil, it lashed round them a furry tongue of fiery soft dust spitting stinging chips of stone” (86). This graphic image portrays land as a violent and unrelenting presence. Even after this assault, the land still does its work to enforce repression and limited vision. This becomes apparent, “When they could breathe and see again, the fury was already gathering up the road on the other side, smoking against the sun and blocking the other horizon” (86). The wind’s influence is both direct and indirect. First it leaves its impression on the physical world, then it blocks and obscures the sight of the visionaries and dreamers.
Life in Gordimer’s South Africa is difficult for the black people who inhabit the land. The wind seems to blow unabated and it is an appropriate reminder of the fact that political and social struggles are a constant companion to the poor and disadvantaged. Few remain untouched by the dirt and debris of the environment. As a metaphor for struggle, the wind ultimately has its lasting power by blinding those it has soiled.
Global Environmental Literature 