Emerged Apartheid in Colonial South Africa: A Critical Commentary on Rosa Burger’s Experience of Her Private Life and Public Life in Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

Abstract

In her novel, Burger's Daughter, Nadine Gordimer (1923) treats the theme in the light of the historic apartheid movement in the then South Africa. The novel primarily focuses on how the black race got severely segregated from the white race in terms of rights in the same land. The novel presents its protagonist, Rosa Burger, who is, actually, the writer's mouthpiece. Rosa wants to put an end to the totalitarian system dreaming of a free South Africa that undertones Gordimer in its fullest. In this process, Rosa has to go through her experiences of being public from her private life. She waits in the line to meet her parents outside the jail, where her parents are kept captivated. She realizes the feeling being "The Other" in her own land because her parents are arrested for their being on the anti-apartheid movement. Being a daughter of a political family, Rosa has also become public to help her parents. During her journey to free her parents, she also experiences the internal colonialism and corruption. Ultimately, she becomes a public figure, realizing the maltreatment she receives from the white Africans and developing her sentiment for the "Black Conscienceness" during the Apartheid hours.