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Post by garygates on Apr 16, 2014 0:02:09 GMT
So, it's open to discussion: What do you think about the last chapter? Analysis? Comparisons? Themes? Any other ideas itching at your skin? Just let them spill.
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Post by garygates on Apr 16, 2014 0:35:09 GMT
Personally, I love the final chapter of the novel. FIrst and foremost I really appreciate the vivid imagery of the novel and the sensory details without dialogue: just the sounds and sights of man and animal's interaction with nature. I think most tantalizing part about the final chapter, however, is its how enigmatic it is. Gordimer obviously doesn't want to explicitly tell readers too much about the future or even the motive behind Maureen's actions, but wants readers to really explore and decide for themselves. When I break the chapter down, it falls really boils down into one important issue: Maureen's identity.
I can talk about this in several ways, so first I will begin with Maureen's identity within her family and village. Throughout the novel, I see Maureen as the character who tries hardest to please others and maintain strong bonds and relationships. This is by no means a negative quality; I am not saying that she is clingy or resistant to change but that she really cares about her family and friends enough to work hard to maintain the notion of 'family.' The final chapter reintroduces all Maureen's effort and dedication to her family when it begins with her cleaning and folding her husband and children's clothes, seeming to be the only one in the family willing to actually work, rather than wander around or frolic about. The transformation that Maureen seems to undergo in identity is that she drops her selflessness momentarily upon hearing the helicopter. She quits slaving away for her family to go out and search for helicopter to cure her own curiosity and to hopefully satiate her own hopes. This is not in my opinion a greedy action, but an empowering one, as she breaks away from her subservient tendencies to pursue what matters to her. This attitude is best portrayed at the end of the final paragraph when Gordimer writes, "She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility" (160). The words that pack the most punch and power are 'solitary' and 'survival,' two attitudes that Maureen has finally, and likely for her own benefit, employed.
This quote also bleeds into my other discussion about Maureen's identity issues. The other balancing act that Maureen tries to maintain throughout the novel is her sense of societal belonging. Maureen is caught in between the crossfire of black villager and white city folk lifestyles. Generally, Maureen seems to display her unwillingness, especially compared to her children and her husband, to alter her lifestyle to adapt to that of villagers. Again, like in "Heart of Darkness," we see this contrast between 'civilization' and what I am going to call 'wildness,' because to me the word, although negative and not at all appropriate for it is a stereotype, seems more fitting and less negative. Although Maureen tries to maintain her personal sense of civility, in the final chapter we see a breakthrough in her sense of wildness, as is characterized by the Gordimer's animal imagery. This imagery is especially prominent in the following few passages: "They shriek, all of them; a woman races past Maureen laughing in terror, the baby on her back rocked amok. The whoop of their voices curves; the thrilling and terrifying thing has at once ducked up to of sight again, raising itself into the cloud" (158) (Gives feeling of some sort of predator to the villagers but prey to Maureen who intently watches the helicopter disappear) "The pace quickens, stalks past the stack of thatch and the wattle fowl-cage, jolts down the incline, leaps stones, breaks into another rhythm. She is running through the elephant grass, dodging the slaps of branches, stooping through thickets of thorn...She makes straight for the ford, and pulling off her shoes balances and jumps from boulder to boulder, and when there are no more boulders does as she has seen done, moves out into the water like some member of a baptismal sect to be born again, and when the water rises to her waist, holds her arms (the shoes in one hand) high for balance while her thighs push swags of water before them" (159) (Animal-like description of the hunt and chase) "Like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility. She can still hear the beat, beyond those trees and those, and she runs towards it. She runs" (160). In these three passages Maureen seems to lose sight of her 'civilized' past and nature and becomes more animalistic. My problem is discerning what exactly this means. The 'animalism' creates a great contrast for the 'civility' that she seems to desire in her chase of the helicopter. By best assessment is not that Maureen desires a return to her 'freedom' and back to her older life, but will do so in a changed manner. Her transformation from the wild caused her to realize the importance and real meaning of her own life, and her determination to return would have meant nothing without her understanding of 'the other side.'
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Post by amysohlberg on Apr 16, 2014 17:35:09 GMT
The last chapter was awesome but somewhat unsatisfying to me. I want to know what happens next!!! That being said, I think it was a mysterious and interesting end to the story.
The thing that struck me the most about this chapter is Maureen's finality and simple desire for some conclusion to the endless dream of her family's life in the village. When she's still in the hut and the helicopter is landing, it seems like she has already made up her mind. She watches it land in the bush and Gordimer writes, "She has folded the half-sewn shorts carefully... Apparently not satisfied with the shorts' appearance, her palm smooths them in a forgotten caress." This "forgotten caress" feels like a goodbye to her children. When she hears the sound of "saviours or murderers" she decides to leave her family behind and walks willingly to either fate.
I have to say, this made me resent Maureen. As time passes in the village, she slowly detaches herself from the responsibilities of her family. She relinquishes care of her children and makes no effort to repair her relationship with Bam. When she hears the helicopter, she finally cuts it off and decides to only care for her own fate. She doesn't just turn away from her family, she runs! At the chance of freedom either in being saved or being killed, she sprints toward it. The last paragraph totally reminded me of A Doll's House.
"She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility." Gordimer writes the last chapter as if Maureen is triumphantly liberated. The last chapter of the book made me rethink what I thought the book was about. Now it seems as if the whole story was a careful study of Maureen's crumbling familial and social expectations and responsibilities in the setting of the South African bush. I can't quite figure this out. The native African women are able to hold on to these responsibilities, despite their wild environment, yet it seems that the white woman is incompatible. I think the last chapter declares that the cultural divide between the white people and the native Africans is an impassable boundary. The Smales family tries to force their way across it, but eventually Maureen has to find her escape in the "saviours or murderers." The attempt for unity between the two cultures ends in failure.
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Post by jessicalee on Apr 17, 2014 1:10:14 GMT
One of the most interesting things I found about the last chapter was the fact that it is in present tense. All of the chapters leading up to the last were written in past tense. Perhaps this shift in tense accounts for a shift in attitude and mental state. Maureen is letting go of the past, in which her life revolved around her family, and moving towards independence. The last couple of lines (which my classmates have already mentioned) state, "She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime..." (160). It seems as though Maureen is finally becoming her own person, rather than serving as everyone else's person- a mom, a wife, or a helper. Her mind is in the present, in which there is only her and the helicopter.
Like Amy, the last line, "She runs", completely left me hanging! Did Maureen reach the helicopter? What about her family? I want to know! The cliffhanger, however, does not make the book any less powerful. In fact, it almost makes it more powerful, for Gordimer leaves it up to the readers to decide Maureen's fate based on our own perceptions of her character.
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Post by gracepark on Apr 17, 2014 4:18:14 GMT
Is it just me or does anyone else’s mind flicker back to the beginning of a novel after reading the ending? Immediately after finishing the last chapter, I remembered how Nadine Gordimer prefaced her book. “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.” Looking back, this line was a red light, a warning, that cautioned the reader. This diversity of morbid symptoms is the flux of undefinedness and ambiguity that plays constantly through the novel. So the puzzling ending is really no surprise.
As stated above, the whole dealio with the helicopter is rather vague and annoyingly up to interpretation. Gah, it’s so frustrating not having something read out to you but at the same time, it’s a gift for imaginations to run wild. But regardless when I read the last page, I didn’t feel reassurance of a promising finale. We see Maureen frantically running towards this unknown helicopter that may or may not determine her life. And for a split second, I feared that the entire book would go to waste if that helicopter was filled with her murderers. But that’s when my memory flickered back to the prefacing quote. This whole story followed the intricate details of Maureen’s life. We see her being stripped, layer by layer, of her awareness of roles and preconceptions. And at this final scene, all we see is a naked and desperate body that neglects the dead and the born and flees to an undetermined destination.
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Post by naomiporter on Apr 17, 2014 6:10:32 GMT
The end of the book was very interesting in its portrayal of Maureen's transition throughout the book from being a civilized (not to go back to our last prompt, but…) and wealthy woman to whatever she is at the end. I think it is interesting how the book seems to slowly focus in more and more on Maureen. At the beginning, the main character really felt like July, but throughout the book, Gordimer seems to draw the focus away from him, except in regard to how he influences the Smales family. Meanwhile, Maureen seems to continually gain more of our attention as Gordimer explores her relationships, particularly with Bam and July. This makes me think that her running towards the helicopter at the end is, as Jessica said, a demonstration of her finally becoming her own person.
This also makes me wonder about her motives for running. The first time she ran away was with her family when they were in danger, but this time she is running toward rather than away from possible danger, and while uncomfortable, the life she was leading in July's village was keeping her and her family alive. I think that it was the gradual loss of power that drove her to run away because she could no longer control most things in her life, particularly July. Though she appears to be decidedly not racist, the reversal of roles takes its toll on her when she loses such symbols of her power as the stolen odds and ends, the keys and the gun. She allows July to take them, but the loss of power in her life drives her to do the one thing she can do in an act of defiance and control by running away, regardless of the danger.
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Post by patricktbutenhoff on Apr 17, 2014 14:00:45 GMT
As Jessica brought up, one of the most striking shifts in the last chapter is the change in tense. The use of the present tense, if only for its rarity, immediately captivates the reader's attention and brings the audience into the jungle with Maureen. Another effect it has, though, is to make the entire rest of the novel seem like a flashback, as though Maureen's life story is flashing through her mind as she runs toward the unseen helicopter. Perhaps the final chapter really is the crux of the novel and the parts in past tense are just exposition.
So what is this all-important idea that's at the heart of July's People? As we discussed earlier as members of the civilization and savagery group, it seems that Maureen is finally shedding her sense of "civilization." Unable to maintain her old society or adapt to conform to July's, Maureen's existence as a member of civilization completely breaks down. I'll bring up the quote everyone else has mentioned: "She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility" (160). Maureen really does turn into an animal at the end of the novel, forgetting her supposed duty to her family, the complicated race relations regarding July, the horror at having lost her way of life forever. Her actions based on instinct and reflex rather than careful thought echo this analogy. It's not even a dichotomy between the Smales' "civilization" and the Africans' "savagery" any more. Ultimately, although they lack riches and technology, the Africans in the novel have a perfectly reasonable, functional society. Maureen descends (ascends?) into the wild, but it's not the same wildness that characterizes July and his family. Maureen's family back home is based on interpersonal relationships: people serving each other to help them live their lives. July's family is supported on the same foundations. But Maureen goes outside this structure entirely. Gordimer writes, "She can still hear the beat, beyond those trees and those, and she runs toward it. She runs" (160). Maureen runs to the beat of the helicopter blades, to her own heartbeat, to the beat of her own drummer. What's really interesting about Gordimer's writing is that it seems to take a positive approach to this transformation, viewing it as a liberation, an act of "trust." Yet at the same time, Maureen seems to lose her humanity, her empathy, her desire for social interaction that is ultimately at the root of what it means to be human. I'm not sure I can agree with Maureen's decision, but it brings up a compelling idea of life, outside the division between black and white.
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Post by chrisb on Jun 4, 2014 6:29:22 GMT
@patrickbutenhoff is right. A little linguistic background makes all the difference here. A more formal term for "the last" is "the ultimate," leading us to analyze its linguistic sibling, "penultimate." Meaning "second to last," the word is reminiscent of the integral role that the author plays in each work of literature. S/he that holds the "pen" presides over the "ultimate" message conveyed, thus enhancing the allegorical innocence of Maureen's parable.
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Post by haleyjensen on Jun 4, 2014 14:44:18 GMT
My motif group put on our feminist critic glasses for a moment and noticed an interesting comparison between the way that July leaves at the end of the novel and the way that Nora, from "A Doll's House" leaves at the end of the novel. When July leaves, her departure is filled with uncomplicated freedom. Ordimer's language to describe July's departure from her family is almost animalistic. On the very last page of the novel, Ordimer writes of July, "She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility" (Ordimer 160). The last few words of that passage are incredibly important: "the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility". July is freed from a life that, while it did have it's benefits, it was a life she never chose to live. This is very different than the way Nora leaves her family. When Nora leaves, it appears that her departure is filled with a sense of entitled feminism. Nora says to her husband, Torvald, "Listen, Torvald, from what I've heard, when a wife leaves her husband's house as I am doing now, he is absolved by law of all responsibility for her. I can at any rate free you from all responsibility. You must not feel in any way bound, any more than I shall. There must be full freedom on both sides. Look, here's your ring back. Give me mine" (Anthology 1733). Nora's departure at the end of A Doll's House is presented in a much more high-socio-economic-class kind of way, and it doesn't necessarily seem like she's leaving to gain freedom, while July definitely is. Nora almost seems as though she's leaving just to prove a point that she can leave if she wants to. Although the endings of these two works have similar plot lines at the end, the way the plot lines are constructed leaves the reader with two situations to consider that present entirely different ideals of responsibility, freedom, and women.
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Post by kevinle on Jun 4, 2014 15:39:00 GMT
Although denouement can seem cheap and cheesy, I expect literature of any sort to have an ending. Life may not have an all-you-can-eat all-inclusive happy ending, and time may be indefinite, but there is not a perfect way to represent this continuity with literature. July's People may avoid denouement with "She runs," but the novel cannot account for the indefinite amount of time that exists before and after the timeline of the novel. The space needs to be filled with writing for that time to exist. So figuratively, Gordimer just chops off all existence after the novel for me by ending with "She runs." Sure, we can interpret the future freely, but it will never be concrete like the future of reality. Even runs have to come to ends.
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