Genre
Short stories, fiction
Setting and Context
The setting is in a South African town when apartheid was legal and being practiced in South Africa.
Narrator and Point of View
The narrators in all the stories are in the third person. They are sympathetic towards the plight of the characters such as apartheid.
Tone and Mood
The stories carry an excited mood especially since the main characters are young playful boys. The tone of the stories is playful and hopeful since the narrator wishes for better times.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists are the characters who are everyday faced by challenges that the system has put in place to oppress them whereas the antagonist is the apartheid system that makes the people feel discriminated, angry and inferior to the boers.
Major Conflict
The conflict in all the stories is that the narrators want to lead a fulfilling life, yet the system is against them and makes it hard for them. For example in Uncle, the artist was a successful artist yet he felt short of that. He felt empty since he did not recognize his roots.
Climax
In the story of Uncle, the climax was arrived when the Uncle defeated Nzulel who was feared in the town in a fight.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
The statement, 'shake him up like a bhuka' is an understatement for it meant beat him up.
Allusions
Biblical allusion since when brother Nzulel and the uncle were fighting, they were compared to David and Goliath. With uncle being David since he was physically smaller and Nzulel being Goliath because he was stronger.
Imagery
The description of the Prophetess as follows, ' Her thick lips protruded, pulling the wrinkled skin and caving in the cheeks to form a kind of lip circle... There was a line tattooed from the forehead to the ridge of a nose that separated small eyes that were half closed by large drooping eyelids.'
Paradox
The narrator claimed that the heat was uncomfortable and pleasurable at the same time. This is a paradoxical statement because you can either feel one or the other.
Parallelism
The narrator has drawn a parallel between a lion who is physically stronger and a predator and an impala who is relatively weaker when compared to the lion and the prey.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The narrator personified a shadow when it was described as follows, ' The young man's shadow was following him.'
