Environment And Humanity

Nadine Gordimer, who won Nobel Prize for Literature in1991, is considered asone of the greatest living writers of the English language in South Africa. As for theaward, the novel July’s People has played a crucial role. Similar to his other works,July’s People was written on the background of racial issues. Based on reality, theauthor imaged a scene that would happen in the future. Just the time when the Blackcrushed an uprising and soon afterwards controlled the whole nation, a white familywent to a black village and made a living there with the guidance of a Negro namedJuly. After a series of events, Maureen chose to escape from the village. This thesistries to analyze the environments and human natures from the perspectives of theplots and the writing skills of this novel.The foreword will give a general introduction to the author and his works, andbesides make a summary of the current domestic research status. Thence we maytalk about the main issues and ideas of the thesis.The first chapter analyzes the content of the novel. First, we may discuss thedistortion of subject and the other. The suffering of the Smales is in contrast with theordinary moralities among different races and the cultural environment of Africa. Inthis way the nature of human beings revealed in depth and width. Second, we couldmake a survey of the adult world from the view of children. Three kids from a whitefamily could get on well with the Black, they did not disengage themselves in raceand identity. From this point of view we may recognize that how greatly culturalcauses influence the world of adults.The second chapter analyzes the form of the novel. First, from the perspectiveof the spatial form of the novel, we may analyze the inner changes of Maureenconcerning the description s of either story space or discourse space. Second, we will analyze the peculiar persons of Maureen. According to the use of persons, we maywitness a growing strangeness of Maureen herself, so that we could have a betterunderstanding of the causes of the escape.In the end we make a conclusion of the factors of the environment andespecially, the human nature. Compared with the former researches which usuallypaid attention to the political environment of Africa, this thesis tries to examine indepth of human nature. In this sense, we hope to provide a supplement to the currentresearches.