A World of Strangers by Nadine Gordimer
"A World of Strangers" by Nadine Gordimer is a poignant novel set against the backdrop of apartheid South Africa, exploring themes of racial tension, privilege, and moral awakening. The protagonist, Toby Hood, a young graduate from London, arrives in Johannesburg aspiring to be a publisher's agent, but his journey soon becomes one of profound personal transformation. Initially apathetic and detached from the harsh realities of racial injustice, Toby's encounters with both the affluent white community and impoverished black townships compel him to confront his own biases and the implications of apartheid.
Through his relationships with significant characters like Anna Louw, a dedicated black rights lawyer, and Steven Sitole, a vibrant black man who becomes Toby's friend, the narrative reveals the stark contrasts and complexities of life in a divided society. As Toby navigates between these worlds, he experiences the brutality of apartheid, culminating in Steven's tragic fate, which shatters Toby’s innocence and forces him to reckon with his own complicity in the system of oppression. Gordimer's exploration of identity and belonging resonates deeply, capturing the moral dilemmas faced by individuals in a society rife with injustice. The novel serves as both a critique of apartheid and a reflection on the universal struggle for understanding and connection across divides.
A World of Strangers by Nadine Gordimer
First published: 1958
Type of work: Social satire
Time of work: The early 1950’s
Locale: Johannesburg, South Africa
Principal Characters:
Tobias (Toby) Hood , the twenty-six-year-old protagonist, a Londoner who moves to JohannesburgCecil Rowe , his South African lover, who sees blacks as savagesAnna Louw , also his lover, a white South African lawyer and black rights advocateSteven Sitole , Toby’s vibrant, fun-loving black South African friend,Sam Mofokenzazi , a family man and jazz pianist, calm and mature
The Novel
Oxford graduate Toby Hood has left London and is traveling to Johannesburg to become a publisher’s agent. Toby, however, becomes much more. With the novel’s first sentence, “I hate the faces of peasants,” the reader senses that Toby is not too socially conscious. By the end of chapter 1, Toby confirms his apathy: “Let the abstractions of race and politics go hang. I want to live! And to hell with you all!”
Toby’s year in Johannesburg dissipates this apathy as he repeatedly comes face-to-face with the shocking horrors of apartheid. For example, Anna Louw, a black rights lawyer, escorts Toby to a party and introduces him to the black man who soon becomes his closest friend: Steven Sitole. When the shrieks of police cars and “the heavy running of police boots” abruptly end the party, Toby and Steven escape to a pumpkin field, “panting and laughing in swaggering, schoolboy triumph.” Unfortunately, Toby’s future encounters with apartheid are not quite as pleasant.
His typist, Miss McCann, decides to find another job when Toby has the audacity to lunch at the office with black men. Later, Toby has to do the leaving, when his landlord discovers that he is entertaining blacks: “Yoo can’t bring kaffirs in my building.... The other tenants is got a right to ’ev yoo thrown out.... Wha’d ’yoo think, sitting here with kaffirs.”
Toby has other unpleasant experiences as well. Among the most disturbing incidents are his arrest after eating Christmas dinner at the house of a black couple, Sam and Ella Mofokenzazi, and his hunting trip with John Hamilton and Guy Patterson, two miners. Though he has no desire to hunt, Toby nevertheless lets John and Guy talk him into accompanying them. Once in the bush, the gothic, nightmarish, miasmic surroundings combine with deafening silence to make Toby uncomfortable. John and Guy periodically pierce the silence by barking demeaning commands to their African servants, and the hunting dogs bark as they chase their prey. Yet the barking actually exacerbates Toby’s discomfort, a discomfort which culminates when he hears the sad cries of the wounded guinea fowl. Consequently, Toby has one of the servants help him escape to the bush’s outskirts. Then, sitting silently, Toby gets a chill when he becomes aware of his loneliness and isolation, and of the servant’s. The two men sit within hand’s reach of each other, but—as if separated by an impenetrable wall—they cannot touch.
Most of the novel consists of Toby alternating between his wealthy white acquaintances at the “High House” and his impoverished friends in Sophiatown and the other townships. The novel ends, coming full circle, with Steven again fleeing the police. This time, however, there is no pumpkin-patch haven, so the police finally win. Toby learns that Steven was killed in a car crash while making a getaway from the Indian club that the police were raiding. Now Toby is no longer innocent, naive, or apathetic; his journey into knowledge is complete, and he leaves Johannesburg.
The Characters
As the novel’s protagonist, twenty-six-year-old Toby is the most fully developed character. A World War II veteran who never left his navy training ship, Toby comes from a middle-class family which, it seems to him, was always fighting some injustice. In reaction against this upbringing, Toby initially wants nothing to do with the world’s problems. He proclaims, “I felt that what I really wanted was to enjoy what was left of the privileged life.... I really belonged to that bad old good life which my parents helped push down into a dishonoured grave.”
The other major characters appear as Toby divides his time between the black townships and the elaborate High House, with its tennis courts, swimming pools, and elaborate flower gardens. Gold-mining millionaire couple Hamish and Marion Alexander own the High House empire and enjoy hosting lavish parties. It is at one of these parties that Toby meets Cecil Rowe, a pretty twenty-nine-year-old divorcee, who later becomes his lover. Though she is a tender and enthusiastic lover, Cecil is an extremely shallow and self-centered person. She habitually neglects her little boy, and she desperately yearns for wealth and status.
At the heart of Toby’s black world are Anna Louw, Steven Sitole, and Sam Mofokenzazi. Like Cecil, Anna is a divorcee, but there the similarities end. Anna—disowned by her family for marrying an Indian and representing blacks and Indians in the courts—is sincere, while Cecil is superficial; Anna is cerebral and spiritual, while Cecil is unreflective and materialistic; Anna is plain, while Cecil is pretty. Symbolically, Anna and Cecil represent two separate and distinct worlds. The ambivalent Toby is torn between the two women, just as he dashes haphazardly between the townships and the High House. To illustrate his confusion, Nadine Gordimer has Toby fall in love with Cecil as he makes love to Anna.
Steven and Sam are the final two major characters. Perhaps because Toby loves both Steven and Cecil, he comes to realize that with the racial barriers removed, Steven and Cecil would have made the perfect couple: “Often I thought how well he and Cecil would have got on together, if they could have known each other. Their flaring enthusiasms, their unchanneled energy, their obstinately passionate aimlessness—each would have matched.” Yet apartheid reduces such a meeting to futile fantasy. The energetic and vibrant Steven, a man who enjoys life to the fullest, is the one character who dies, chased to an early death by the police. Sam, the African whom Toby initially views as a “little Black Sambo,” is a jazz pianist and the most sensitive and mature of the characters. Ironically, Sam is the person who comforts Toby after Steven’s death. No longer able to stomach the emptiness and the facade of High House, Toby goes to Sam’s house and finds a nurturing peace and harmony.
Critical Context
A World of Strangers is only one of the many literary gems that have won for Nadine Gordimer tremendous critical acclaim since she made her debut with The Lying Days (1953). In 1978, Gordimer was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, whose citation reads: “The brilliance with which she renders her varied characters has opened her country to passionate understandings which most of us have no other access to.” Among her other awards are England’s Booker Prize and the 1986 Bennett Award for distinguished achievement in the short story and novel.
Gordimer’s writing is engaging, moving, refreshing, and above all, lasting. Her compelling moral vision, which she so forcefully articulates in A Guest of Honour (1970), Burger’s Daughter (1979), and A World of Strangers, serves as a luminous beacon for readers throughout the world.
Bibliography
Cooke, John Wharton. The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: Private Lives, Public Landscapes, 1985.
Driver, Dorothy. Nadine Gordimer: The Politicisation of Women, 1983.
Gardner, Colin. “Nadine’s World of Strangers,” in Reality. XIII (1976), pp. 13-15.
Green, Robert. “Nadine Gordimer’s A World of Strangers: Strains in South African Liberalism,” in English Studies in Africa: A Journal of the Humanities. XXII (1978), pp. 45-54.
Ogungbesan, Kolawole. “Reality in Nadine Gordimer’s A World of Strangers,” in English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature. LXI (April, 1980), pp. 142-155.