Decoding The Classics ‘A Soldier’s Embrace’

Nadine Gordimer’s classic short story ‘A Soldier’s Embrace’ is one that depicts the ambiguity of race relations in a space where equality and class intersect leaving a liberal lawyer’s wife unsure of how to act.

The story is filled with subliminal messages eluding the unavoidable tension and unconscious prejudices of race relations that has a led a generation of whites, that once had a one way relationship with black people as servants, to see themselves as equals.

Long after independence in 1990, the tone of this story still holds true.

Gordimer speaks from an omniscient perspective, as though she is looking down from the clouds and watching over the lawyer’s wife, who is not given a name. The story focuses on a post war setting. The independence atmosphere is presented as a beacon of hope for a prosperous and unified existence with blacks and whites, however at the beginning of the story, the lawyer’s wife bumps into two soldiers celebrating the cease-fire – one white, one black.

In an abrupt moment, she kisses them both on the cheek, and as the narration continues, we witness the revolutionaries take more and more control of the city. She remembers that embrace obsessively.

This encounter becomes a recurring point of reference in most of the story. There was something that gave this woman a feeling of inertia and uneasiness even though her husband described their household as progressive. He worked to defend the black movement and the rebels that were fighting for independence.

The couple welcome into their home the radical black priest and the poor black Chipande; they also feel a paternalistic attitude toward their servant Muchanga. In this dynamic we unearth the awkwardness of living in an equal existence. We see how the lawyer’s wife is unable to ask for anything. There was an air of fear.

“The ugly mansions of the rich who had fled stood empty on the bluff above the sea.”

People had left the country expecting to migrate into a peaceful alternative. It is as though they had premonitions of wrath they thought they deserved.

“She avoided walking past the barracks because of the machine guns the young sentries had in place of rifles.”

As the book progresses, we see the manifestation of fear grow and hopes of dwelling in co-existence weeded out. The couple eventually decides to migrate as the momentary glory of independence is subdued with uneasiness.

Gordimer’s writing in this story has often been cited as difficult to follow. It as though she was writing purposely through metaphor to connect her writing style to the ambiguity of race relations, which is in itself difficult to understand. No one talks directly about it but its existence is recognisable. She did the same.

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