Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer, Judith Newman - Themes In The Lying Days

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

THEMES IN THE LYING DAYS

OVERVIEW

The themes in The Lying Days highlight the interaction between the personal and the public, for the novel is both a bildungsroman, a story of a young person's growth and education, and a topical novel that engages directly with the history of South Africa in the twentieth century, particularly with the period in which apartheid was established. As a result, the body is a focus of interest as Helen grows up and discovers sexuality and at the same time recognizes the racism of her society. Positive and negative versions of bodily discovery are juxtaposed. Helen's adolescent feelings well up from her inmost self and propel her beyond the narrow life of her parents. Beneath her feet, however, quite literally, are thousands of buried black bodies, miners in the underground seams, whose existence is invisible to her. Helen comments in horror on the discovery of a mine worker's dead body close to the railway station,...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Essay: Introduction
3. Themes In The Lying Days
4. Critical Response To The Lying Days
5. The Lying Days In History
6. The Lying Days As Studied
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright

1. Nadine Gordimer