Jump and Other Stories

“A mother and father must never make any move that might jeopardize the opportunities they themselves have not been able to provide.” 

This is another early passage that reinforces that the soldier’s parents only wanted the best for their son. Their concern for their child’s future makes them sympathetic characters, and their indifference toward their Black neighbors’ suffering makes them complicated and complex. The soldier’s parents are an early example of Gordimer’s ability to craft complex families that heighten the joy and sadness of her main characters’ stories throughout the collection.

“We should have never allowed it. Giving in, letting you run wild with those boys. It started to go wrong then, we should have seen you were going to make a mess of our lives, I don’t know why. You had to go jumping from up there. Do you know what I felt, seeing you fall like that, enjoying yourself frightening us to death while you fooled around with killing yourself? We should have known it. Where it would end. Why did you have to be like that? Why? Why?”

The soldier’s mother laments who her son came to be, elevating the drama between the characters and enhancing the tragic tone of the story. Her recollection of her son’s time parachuting offers an image of the soldier falling from a great height, which foreshadows and enhances the drama of his fall from grace. As a child, he fooled around with killing himself. At the end of the story, he is doing the same, and the reader is left to wonder if the soldier will ever make the final jump and end his life.

“So yes, I knew what happened to those girl children. I knew that our army had become—maybe always was—yes, what you say, a murderous horde that burned hospitals, cut off the ears of villagers, raped, blew up trains full of workers. Brought to devastation this country where I was born. It’s there, only the glowing curtains keep it out.” 

The soldier’s acceptance of the atrocities committed by his faction showcases the horrific effect hate can have on a person’s psyche. He’s aware his allies’ actions have destroyed his own country, and he accepts it. His only means of escape now is to draw the curtains in his hotel room, to shut himself out of his own home because of his actions and the horrors he condoned.

“So from every window and door in the house where they were living happily ever after they now saw the trees and sky through bars, and when the little boy’s pet cat tried to climb in by the fanlight to keep him company in his little bed at night, as it customarily had done, it set off the alarm keening through the house.” 

The family’s chief concern in “Once Upon a Time” is feeling secure in their home, so they install numerous safety features in and around their home. The urge to feel safe comes at a price. Their view of the outside world is obstructed, and the boy’s cat struggles to adjust as well. Here, Gordimer shows that the need to feel safe carries its own set of consequences.

“The African Adventure Lives On… You can do it! The ultimate safari or expedition with leaders who know Africa. —Travel Advertisement, Observe, London, 27/11/88.” 

In the opening epigraph of “The Ultimate Safari,” the lines establish a sense of wonder and adventure. The drama of Story 3, of a family fleeing their home to survive, creates a stark contrast to the tone of the opening epigraph. The passage creates a sense of irony: How a country is advertised to potential tourists can contrast greatly with the actual events unfolding there.

“All that day we just sat and waited. Everything is very quiet when the sun is on your head, inside your head, even if you lie, like the animals, under the trees. I lay on my back and saw those ugly birds with hooked beaks and plucked necks flying round and round above us. We had passed them often where they were feeding on the bones of dead animals, nothing was ever left there for us to eat.” 

As the refugees travel across Kruger Park, they are advised to mimic animals to avoid being caught, but surviving like the animals proves impossible. The girl’s hunger shows the disconnect from humans and the natural world, making her country’s war even more devastating. Displaced now, she struggles to find essentials for survival. The vultures add a sense of grim foreboding and hint that her missing grandfather is dead.

“He cleared the house of whatever his devoted second wife had somehow missed out when she left with the favourite possessions they had collected together—paintings, rare glass, even the best wines lifted from the cellar. He threw away books on whose flyleaf the first wife had lovingly written her new name as a bride. Then he went on holiday without taking some woman along. For the first time he could remember; but those tarts and tramps with whom he had believed himself to be in love had turned out unfaithful as the honest wives who had vowed to cherish him forever.” 

“A Find” centers on a man who distrusts and objectifies women. In this early passage, Gordimer gives the reader insight into how the man became the way he is, making him a rounder and more complex character. The man’s perspective provides a contrasting perspective to the little girl’s point of view in Story 3, “The Ultimate Safari,” and serves as an example of the sexist mindset of the men in this world.

“It’s not good here, he said when the men of the party came out of the bar. You watch your pocket. Gypsies. They don’t work, only steal, and make children so the government gives them money ever time.” 

An off-hand remark from an unnamed character establishes the world of Story 5 as an outwardly racist one. Throughout the collection, Gordimer employs side characters and dialogue to remind the reader of the prejudices held by many of the characters. These are also some of the first words spoken when the boy arrives in his new country and hint at the future prejudices that he will adopt himself.

“One of the first things he will have noticed when he arrived was that the moon in the Southern Hemisphere lies the wrong way round. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west but the one other certainty to be counted on, that the same sky that covers the village covers the whole earth, is gone. What greater confirmation of how far away; as you look up, on the first night.” 

Gordimer utilizes her description of the natural world to heighten the drama for the main character. The placement of the moon unsettles the boy. He feels not wonder and awe but unease, imbuing his new environment with tension.

“The silence of cold countries at the approach of winter. On an island of mud, still standing where a village tracks parts like two locks of wet hair, a war memorial is crowned with the emblem of a lost occupying empire that has been succeeded by others, and still others.” 

Gordimer departs from driving the narrative of “My Father Leaves Home” to give the world depth and history. Descriptions of a cold and unsteady environment give the setting a grim tone, reinforcing the harshness and fragility of human history. Empires have come and gone and will continue to do so, a key theme Gordimer builds upon in the collection.

“Some are Born to sweet delight, Some are Born to Endless Night. William Blake—‘Auguries of Innocence.’” 

The opening epigraph to “Some Are Born to Sweet Delight” reminds the reader how differently life can play out for different people. As the story unfolds, Vera’s relationship with Rad progresses in a nonconfrontational way, only to be disrupted by Rad’s betrayal and Vera’s death. Rad’s motive only becomes clear at the end; he wants revenge for injustices done to his people, and Vera is caught in the crossfire. At the conclusion of the story, the epigraph’s foreshadowing is fully realized. Vera saw life through a lens of romance, whereas Rad was brooding and plotting revenge.

“Do you know what you’re doing? Do you know what he is? We don’t have any objection to them, but all the same. What about your life? What about the good firm your father’s got you into? What’ll it look like, there?” 

Vera’s parents pressure her numerous times to reconsider her relationship with Rad. Vera remains strong and refuses, giving her character greater agency. The racist tone of her parents’ concerns also gives their characters a villainous quality, making Rad’s identity as a violent radical more surprising at the end.

“As Mrs. Hattie Telford pressed the electronic gadget that deactivates the alarm device in her car a group of youngsters came up behind her. Black. But no need to be afraid; this was not a city street.” 

The opening lines of Story 7, “Comrades,” give the reader insight into Hattie’s inner dialogue. When she sees a group of young Black people, she instinctively debates how worried she should be. Hattie makes every effort to appear progressive and outwardly treats the group with kindness and generosity, but her interiority reveals that even a White activist like herself can hold prejudices.

“She looks at them all and cannot believe what she knows: that they, suddenly here in her house, will carry the AK-47s they only sing about, now, miming death as they sing.” 

Hattie comes to a harsh realization: The Black youths in front of her will become fighters. Throughout the story, she sees them as children, but she now intuits what their futures hold for them. Hattie’s vision of their future reinforces the limited opportunities young Black people had in South Africa during apartheid and the violent revolutionary paths it can send them down.

“We cleaned the streets and dug the dams and begged and stole; became like anybody else. The children forgot the last few words of the shipwreck dialect we once had spoken. Our girls married and no longer bore our name. In time we went into the armies, we manned the street stands selling ice-cream and hot dogs, all over the mainland that is the world.” 

Gordimer uses the Teraloyna people to continue her commentary on assimilation and erasure. Upon leaving their home, the Teraloynas become enmeshed in other countries and cultures. Their values and practices do not spread but are lost; in this way, Gordimer shows how easily a small and humble culture can be erased by other societies.

“Because nothing the government can do will appease the agitators and the whites who encourage them. Nothing satisfies them, in the cities: blacks can sit and drink in white hotels, now, the Immorality Act has gone, blacks can sleep with whites… It’s not even a crime any more.” 

Every story is fraught with racial tension. The police and Marais want to avoid political drama from the hunting accident, but the long and violent history in South Africa between White and Black people makes that difficult. The passage also references the Immorality Act, a piece of legislation in South Africa that made it illegal for White people to have extramarital sex with non-White people, reminding the reader of the normalized and perverse segregation in South Africa. The legislation is appropriate for the story, as the story later reveals Marais had a child with a Black woman.

“—Her whole face trembled. He suffered with her. He was aware that it is a common occurrence that people talk with love about one they have despised and resented, once that person is dead. And to be in prison under Section 29, no one knows where, was to be dead to the world where one did not deserve to be loved.” 

Nils displays tenderness and care during Teresa’s familial drama, making him a sympathetic character. Teresa’s devotion to freeing her mother adds tension to her marriage, and Nils’s relatability makes her actions carry more consequence. The passage also comments on the entangled nature of love and hate, two intense emotions that can be difficult to separate. Lastly, the stakes are raised for Teresa’s mother because of the rights she loses under Section 29, further adding to the drama of the story.

“Perhaps there was no lover? He saw it was true that she had left him, but it was for them, that house, the dark family of which he was not a member, her country to which he did not belong.” 

The closing lines of “Home” provide both comfort and sadness. Nils’s anxiety about a potential affair fades, but he also realizes Teresa has still left him in a meaningful way. She chooses her family over him, leaving him feeling isolated and alone. The tone is bittersweet and impactful and coalesces with the ending of many other stories in the collection.

“I saw Him finding us, seeing us for the first time, watching my mother and me feeding the baby, He might have been able to see her breast from where He was, He’s tall. He threw up his head and His mouth opened, He was happy, He was coming to get us. I felt full of joy and strength, it was like being angry, but much better, much much better. I saw him looking at us and he knew that I saw him, but I didn’t look back at him.” 

The family reunion at the airport in “A Journey” is marred with complicated emotions. The boy feels happiness, but his passion is mixed with a resentment for his father, whom he refuses to look at. The boy also shows a growing possessiveness for his mother when he wonders if his father can see her breasts. The family might be reunited, but through the boy’s interiority, Gordimer shows the moment isn’t idyllic. Their time apart has changed their relationships.

“Love is found in prison, this no-beauty has loved him while his body was not present; and he loved his brothers—he’s talking about them, not using the word, but the sense is there so strongly—although they live shut in with their own pails of dirt, he loves even the murderers whose night-long death songs he heard before they were taken to be hanged in the morning.” 

The collection features many revolutionaries and activists, as both main and supporting characters. Here, the unnamed main character of “Spoils” assesses his coworker, an ex-political prisoner. While the two men don’t agree on everything, the main character senses the authentic love his coworker has for the men he knew in prison. The passage humanizes revolutionaries and criminals despite their violent actions, a message Gordimer returns to throughout her stories.

“—They’re unreal to me. I don’t just mean because most of them are black. That’s obvious, that we have nothing in common. I wish them well, they ought to have a better life… conditions … I suppose it’s good that things are changing for them… but I’m not involved, how could I be, we give money for their schools and housing and so on—my husband’s firm does, like everybody else…” 

Sylvie’s life is one of isolation. She spends most of her time within the confines of her expensive house. Because she cuts herself off from others, especially people of different races, she can’t sympathize with problems that don’t immediately affect her. She rationalizes that she pays taxes, or rather her husband does, but the world remains abstract to her.

“People as the figures, decimal points and multiplying zero-zero-zeros into which individual lives—Black Persons Orderly-Moved, -Effluxed, -Grouped—coagulate and compute. Now he has here in the car the intimate weary odour of a young man to whom these things happen.” 

When the elderly woman summarizes the history of apartheid to her English driver, the information is impersonal. She speaks plainly because she hasn’t suffered from discriminatory and oppressive legislation. Now, the driver can see someone whose life has been dictated by those policies. The strong body odor of the Black man adds vividness to the scene, enhancing the harsh reality of apartheid the driver and elderly woman now see so closely.

“Not quite a highway, the road divided the territory of Alicewood, named for the daughter of a real estate developer, from Enterprise Park, the landscaped industrial buffer between the suburb and the black township whose identity was long overwhelmed by a squatter camp which had spread to the boundary of the industries and, where there was vacant ground, dragged through these interstices its detritus of tin and sacking, abutting on the highway.” 

Within the span of a morning run, the man in “Keeping Fit” moves from a secure and well-kept suburb into a struggling and underfunded area. The stark visual differences between the neighborhoods, despite their proximity to one another, creates a vivid contrast between how White and Black people live in this segregated story. Also, the area, Alicewood, comes from the name of a developer’s daughter, showing that in this society a few have tremendous power and influence while the masses suffer.