Jump and Other Stories
Jump and Other Stories (1991) by Nadine Gordimer Jump” tells the story of a White soldier confined to a hotel room as he waits to be freed and reflects on his life. As a youth, he joins a parachute club and revels in the thrill. The Black community around the soldier’s family rebels against an oppressive system, but the soldier’s family is apathetic to their cause. After the Black military gains more control, the soldier is arrested at the beach for taking photographs. He grows to hate the current government and leaves for Europe, where he organizes with others to fight a counterrevolution. He returns to South Africa and is complicit in horrific war crimes. Now captured, he gives the government information in exchange for his life and a second chance. In his hotel, he senses that chance will never come, and he contemplates jumping from his hotel balcony.
Quotes
[edit]- A house and a car. Eventually some sort of decent position. Rehabilitated.
- Page 5.
- Sometimes he found himself swimming underwater beneath them, his tough-skinned body grazing past like a shark.
- Page 50
- And so when we left we had among us only a child here and there who was raw-faced and blue-eyed; we were coloured neither very dark nor very light .
- Page99-100
- He could not say to this woman, That’s not what I read.
- Page 234
- They had smashed his camera and locked him up like a black and he hated them and their government and everything they might do, whether it was good or bad.
- Page 8.
- He is not listening: the swell and clash, the tympani of conflict, the brass of glory, the chords of thrilling resolve, the maudlin strings of regret, the pauses of disgust—they come from inside him.
- Page 4
- The boy would perhaps become an accountant, certainly something one rung above his father, because each generation must better itself, as they had done by emigrating.
- Story 1, Page 7
- A mother and father must never make any move that might jeopardize the opportunities they themselves have not been able to provide.
- Story 1, Page 10
- 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?
- Story 1, Page 12
- The curtains are open upon the dark, at night. When he gets up in the morning he closes them. By now they are on fire with the sun. The day pressing to enter. But his back is turned; he is an echo in the chamber of what was once the hotel."
- page 3
- We were tired, so tired. My first-born brother and the man had to lift our grandfather from stone to stone where we found places to cross the rivers. Our grandmother is strong but her feet were bleeding. We could not carry the basket on our head any longer, we couldn't carry anything except my little brother. We left our things under a bush. As long as our bodies get there, our grandmother said."
- page 39