THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY IN NADINE GORDIMER’S THE CONSERVATIONIST

Abstract

This paper aims at imparting to the reader a segment of the social political history of South Africa harshly criticized by a white female writer who has committed herself through a work of fiction to denouncing to the whole world the plight and tribulations of non-white people by white settlers who reign supreme over everything in the country. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, historical criticism, and Marxist literary criticism, this paper first sweeps across the relationships among the different racial groups in The Conservationist, then the individual's living conditions in South African society under apartheid and finally points out the merits of the novel under study by comparing Gordimer’s depiction of apartheid.