Nadine Gordimer's Public Concern As An Intellectual In The House Gun

Nadine Gordimer, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, is known as "conscience of South Africa" for her persistence in revealing the evil nature of the apartheid system in her literary creation. In the past fifty years, she has never failed to show her deep concern for the fate of South Africa and its people, whether in apartheid time, or after the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa. She illustrates the true connotation of the term 'intellectual' with her own action—the true intellectual is never the one who gives his idle talk in the ivory tower. This dissertation undertakes the task of exploring Gordimer's deep concern as an intellectual for her country and people in her post-apartheid novel—The House Gun.Chapter I discusses the public concern of the intellectuals. By analyzing some famous intellectuals' (such as Emerson, Gramsci and Said) understandings of the term "intellectual" and by exploring from the perspective of etymology, I conclude that a deep concern for the public should be an essential quality of intellectuals. The connotation of public concern may be understood from three aspects: to the public, for the public and about the public. Besides, this same chapter further notes a decline of this essential quality of intellectuals as a result of two trends—the specialization of knowledge system and the commercialization of culture production.Chapter II and Chapter III explore Gordimer's public concern in this novel based on the analysis of the two major issues in this novel, Duncan Lindgard's "accidental" violent crime and the apathy of Harald and Claudia Lindgard during the apartheid era.After a brief introduction of The House Gun, Chapter II deals with the "accidental" violent crime of a young white architect, Duncan Lindgard. By exploring the causes of this violent crime, Gordimer actually made an exploration of the problematic prevalence of violence in post-apartheid South Africa. With the support from Johan Galtung's theory of violence, Gordimer's differentiation of the several forms of violence and of the motives of its performers is highlighted here. And thus, based on an inference that the violent atmosphere should be responsible for Duncan's crime, the necessity to establish a culture of nonviolence is clearly revealed to us.Chapter III focuses on the Lindgard couple's apathy toward their fellowmen's suffering during the apartheid era. And this apathy is mainly reflected in the field of politics, since politics is something that one can hardly escape in South Africa. The danger of this apathy is explored mainly from a political perspective—their apathy is essentially an extreme form of negative liberty. By proving that "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all", this dissertation reveals the link between Duncan's crime and his parents' apathy is revealed to us: people's apathy towards the suffering of their fellowmen offers convenience to the apartheid system in South Africa, which is an indirect cause of Duncan's crime. Thus, the violent crime is no longer "accidental", but an evil consequence of the Lindgards' apathy.In the concluding chapter, by analyzing Gordimer's public concern in this novel, a conclusion is drawn that Nadine Gordimer is a true intellectual.