The Diviner's Task

Confinement and Transformation through Myth and Ritual in Gordimer's The Conservationist

Bibliographic Data

ID9250331
AuthorsGitte Postel (corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume38
Issue4
Pages47-60
Publication date2007-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch in African Literatures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/ral.2007.38.4.47
OpenAlexW2013313893
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited17

When read in what were perhaps South Africa's darkest decades, the 1970s and 1980s, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist seemed to be a rather apocalyptic novel. But the fear-stricken, history-bound protagonist who walks right into his own trap shows only one side of reality. The other side is referred to by his two antagonists who are—as a dead man who has yet to be buried and a woman becoming a diviner—both in the middle of an existential transformation; a rite of passage that implies not only change, but also the temporary acceptance of phenomenological chaos, before a new order can be formulated. Gordimer seems to hold the (future) reader responsible for completing the rite of passage: identity and destiny of the characters will eventually depend on the viewpoint and intertextual input of the reader

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Mythology · Transformation (genetics) · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Chemistry · Philippine History and Culture · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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