Resumo de The Moment Before The Gun Went Off

In ?The Moment Before the Gun Went Off,? Nadine Gordimer presents readers
with a poignant vignette of South African apartheid. Gordimer is not out to
blame, an instinctive tendency that would only widen the already gaping
black-white schism. In ?The Moment,? Gordimer means to link the two races
as victims of the injustices of apartheid, and possibly to contribute to the
eradication of a segregationist mindset and to the reconciliation of blacks and
whites. Her vehicle is Marais Van der Vyver?s ?twenty-year old farmhand,?
Lucas. In the story, Van der Vyver has taken particular interest in this ?black
boy,? teaching him tractor maintenance and taking him hunting. As usual,
Lucas rode in the bed of the pickup, scouring the African grasses for game,
while Van der Vyver drove. Vand de Vyber's gun discharges and renders Lucas
a victim of freak accident, negligence, and ultimately apartheid.

In Gordimer?s South Africa, apartheid has become more than legislation; it
has become a mentality that segregates and prejudges. Lucas and Van der
Vyver were separated by more than the rear window of the truck. The narrator
is an unmistakable apartheid-sympathizer. He drops stereotypes carelessly,
always commenting on how blacks raise their children, on how blacks waste
their money on funerals, and on ?their? perceived short-comings and
idiosyncrasies in general. Lucas is not a boy; he is a ?black boy.? The narrator,
wide-eyed with disbelief, remarks that ?blacks can sit and drink in white
hotels? and that ?blacks can sleep with whites.? These are unthinkable
liberties in the mind of the white apartheid-advocate. By speaking from the
perspective of an apartheid supporter, Gordimer manages to storm the
apartheid fortress from within, and in the process, seizes a brilliant sense of
irony and seemingly unquestionable credibility for herself. Gordimer sounds
her loudest peal of irony in the last sentence: Lucas is Van der Vyver?s son,
and therefore, both white and black. Just as Van de Vyver has failed to
acknowledge his son, the white community has refused to acknowledge the
culture of discrimination and oppression they have been supporting.
However, ?the young black callously shot through the negligence of the white
man? is not only the farmer?s son; he is a symbol. Lucas, as the son of Van
der Vyver and one of his farm workers, is the intersection of the black and
white divisions. Apartheid has extinguished Lucas? life, along with black
dignity and white moral integrity. Gordimer has slid her keystone into place
and has constructed a South Africa divided, confused, and victimized by
apartheid.

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