A Study Guide for Nadine Gordimer's "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Nadine Gordimer's "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535824019

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Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants

Nadine Gordimer

1965

Introduction

Race relations and racial prejudice are perennial themes in the work of renowned South African author Nadine Gordimer. Many of her stories and novels are set in her native country during the era of apartheid, when government policy officially relegated black South Africans to second-class status. Gordimer's characters are often liberal in their attitudes; in some cases, a shattering experience forces a naive or racist white to alter his or her views.

The story Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants, originally published in a collection entitled Not For Publication (1965), differs somewhat from this pattern. Although its main character undergoes a trying experience, her racist beliefs remain unaltered and unquestioned. The narrator relies on the counsel and assistance of the character she calls Jack, but she continues to treat him condescendingly. This ironic contradiction, drawn with Gordimer's characteristic subtlety, reveals much about the entrenched ideology of apartheid. Beyond the racial dimension, the story explores other dynamics of power in interpersonal relationships, as a mysterious drifter inserts himself into the main character's lonely life and proceeds to take advantage of her. Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants is currently available in Gordimer's short story collection, Six Feet of the Country (1986).

Author Biography

In a remarkable career spanning more than half a century, Nadine Gordimer has captured the wrenching reality of the South African experience in her short stories and novels. Gordimer was born November 20, 1923, in Springs, South Africa, a white mining town in the Transvaal region near Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore, was a watchmaker originally from Lithuania; her mother was born in England. Gordimer's early years in school exposed her to South Africa's culture of apartheid. She was educated at home for most of her adolescence after being diagnosed with a heart condition at age nine. Deprived of social interaction with other children, she took sustenance from her local library and began writing stories at an early age. For one year, she studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

As a young writer, Gordimer was able to publish stories first in small South African magazines, then in prestigious American publications such as Harper's and the New Yorker. By the age of thirty, she had two published collections to her credit, along with her first novel, The Lying Days (1953).