In Peter Abrahams short story "Crackling Day" he focuses on the consequences of the unjust system of the apartheid in South Africa. Instead of discussing problems involving thousands of people who are innocent victims of the apartheid, Abrahams concentrates on the lives of four normal black South Africans also caught up in the cruel web of the apartheid. The story is written in first person narrative through the eyes of a young boy. This young boy, Lee shows us what prejudices the blacks face as they struggle for existence in their own country.
However Lee's narrative eventually brings us to an understanding of hope, love and triumph of the human spirit. As the story opens, we are shown the great poverty and squalor that the black community are forced to live in; everything they do is dependent on the whites. Lee lives with his Aunt Liza and Uncle Sam in a shack in the countryside. We learn that Lee's family are extremely poor and find it hard to afford even the basic everyday essentials.
We are shown that Lee must make the long trek to fetch a small piece of pig's rind that would suffice for the family's daily supply of meat.The family struggle to survive the winter with such little money available, Aunt Liza cannot afford warm clothing so she has to wear "many cotton dresses" this shows just how poor the family are, and that they also struggled to even find enough money to buy food "from this she pulled a six penny piece" this money is so precious to the family that Aunt Liza "tied it in the corner of a bit of coloured cloth" this money was the only thing that the family had. Aunt Liza tells lee to " Take the smaller piece of bread in the bin..
. ". This implies that there are only two pieces of bread in the bin, another sign of how poor the family really is.Lee describes being hunted down and plagued by some unwanted being, he named it IT " IT was a half human monster with evil thoughts, evil intentions bent on destroying us" this really show how frightened, not only Lee but the rest of the blacks are, of IT, what ever IT may be. The way in which Abrahams describes IT brings connotations of some sort of fiendish monster.
This paragraph makes the reader draw several conclusions as to what IT may be, maybe IT is the cold or maybe IT is the cruelty and violence inflicted on the blacks by the white people.The whites treated the black South Africans very badly; it was not just the men but the boys as well. Whilst Lee and This shows how little the whites thought of the blacks, they treated them like slaves and gave them no rights of their own. The blacks even had to call the white people baas, the Afrikaans word for boss. The blacks were completely against calling the whites baas when they were no even allowed to call it them in their own language.
The young white boys also picked up the bad bullying habit from the people around them, they had not known any different, to them they were completely superior to the blacks.Insults like "your fathers are dirty black bastards of baboons! " were commonly used as a way of humiliating the blacks. It must have been almost like being hunted down by wild animals; everywhere they went there was one fierce creature after another whether it was the cold or the whites. Not only did the whites humiliate the blacks, but later in they century continued to discriminate them in hundreds of ways, for instance, they made blacks use separate buses, toilets and shops etc.When the white boys insulted lee's father, foolishly Lee retaliated and fought with the white boys, even though they won the white baas came to Lee's house and threatened to evict them if Sam did not beat Lee for raising his hand to a white boy.
" Teach him Sam. If you and he are to live here, you must teach him". There are many injustices in the apartheid system, for instance in the story Lee and Andreis had to walk what was probably many miles in the freezing cold, with bare feet, just to collect a tiny piece of pig's rind.At one point Lee says" The cold was not so terrible on bare feet if one did not keep still" this shows that lee did not even have shoes, if he had been white he would have been able to afford basic essentials like shoes and clothing. If it had been the whites that were getting the pig's rind, which they never would but they would probably have not have had to walk, and certainly not in bare feet.
The whites would have been able to afford a shoes and maybe a car, a privilege that the blacks could not afford.If Lee had been a white boy he would have been at school, getting an education As Lee is black though he was thought to only need a minimal education if any, when Lee was older he would probably become a farm worker and would become like a slave to a white person Lee would not be paid very much that is obvious from the amount that Sam gets paid, and how much the family struggle for existence. Abrahams encourages you to become increasingly sympathetic towards Lee as the story progresses because we know that Lee is not totally innocent but we do know the full story that the white boys first started the argument.We are also made to feel sorry for Lee by the way that Abrahams makes Lee such a strong and well-loved character.
When Uncle Sam is forced to inflict the savage beating on Lee, you not only feel for Lee but for his aunt and Uncle as well. The way the white bass comes around to the house " A trap pulled up outside the house. Here it is said Uncle Sam`" was almost as if Lee was being hunted and when they forced Sam to beat Lee that was as if they had finally caught him. You can understand from Sam's point of view how hard it would have been to hurt one of the people that he loved most in the world.He had to make the choice between hurting Lee and losing his home, job and livelihood.
" Explain to the child, Liza " This shows that Sam feels so guilty about what he has just done that he can not even talk to Lee. The violence is not only done to Lee and is not all physical, but mental as well. The way that the white bass gave Sam an ultimatum, to decide between Lee and his future, was done deliberately to damage Sam from the inside to make him feel so guilty that it will ruin the family, but Sam is made of stronger stuff and he knows that love will always overcome evil.Aunt Liza and Uncle Sam along with all black people think that the cruel apartheid is unfair, both races are equal yet the whites think that they are superior. There is nothing that the blacks can do about these injustices, because if they campaign they run the risk of being jailed and eventually killed. As they say actions speak louder that words and in this story that is true.
When Lee was being beaten he " looked at Aunt Liza's face. Though there was no sound of life or feeling in it, I knew, suddenly, instinctively, that she wanted me not to cry" This is more proof as to how strong the bond between the family members is.Aunt Liza does not want Lee to show that he is weak, she is trying to tell him, through her eyes, that Sam does not really want to beat Lee but he has to, she is trying to reassure Lee, that everything will be alright in the end. We know that Sam is feeling very guilty because he buys Lee an orange, a bag of boiled sweets and an old tatty picture book.
These gifts are not worth very much financially but sentimentally these small gifts give Lee the reassurance that he needs to be able to trust Sam again, a person he thought cared about him.In the story there is hope that the cruel apartheid system will eventually be defeated. At the end of the story Sam says "One day..
. " this phrase is ambiguous, there are many things that could be said after those two words, for instance "one day the world will be equal" or "One day We will have justice and overcome the whites" but Liza interrupts and Sam breaks of, Abrahams has left dots here to encourage us the reader to think for ourselves and discover the true meaning of this story.The family know that there are stronger things than hate and evil, like love and hope. The whites have somehow come to feel superior and have gained power that is not theirs; they do not even let the native people of their own country speak their own language. Overall the story implies that with Lee's courage and Aunt Liza's strength that there will be a different South Africa in times to come.
