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Eng1501 Review of the Short Story ‘Rock' by Lindiwe Nkutha
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Eng1501 Review of the Short Story ‘Rock' by Lindiwe Nkutha
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Review of the Short Story ‘ Rock’ by LindiweNkutha
ENG1501
Foundations in English Literary Studies (University of South Africa)
In the book “Recognition: An anthology of South-African short stories”, the short story “Rock” written
by Lindiwe Nkutha, possesses humorous and mysterious elements that centers the reader’s attention
towards the characters and the social concerns that surround them. This specific story focusses on
social concerns such as poverty and hunger in impoverished communities, people’s disabilities and the
questioning of gender roles. In this essay these social concerns will be expressed through certain short
story characteristics.
The tile of a short story has a magnificent effect on how the reader expects the story to be.
The title “ROCK”, which is a uniquely formed stone, has an immediate connotation with dirt.
This focusses the reader’s attention towards a poverty-stricken tone. Nevertheless, this title
, withholds a lot of surprises and unfolds as the story progresses.
The story launches into a first-person narrator experience. The first striking phrase “I lost
both my legs to hunger”(Nakutha 2006: 219), immediately snatches the reader’s attention.
The narrator speaks of her own experiences, this is a typical characteristic of a short story.
This type of storytelling guides the reader to understand the setting, tone and other
characters out of the main character’s (in this case also the narrator’s) view. The reader
expects that the narrator lives in a disadvantaged community where hunger and poverty can
be found all around. The story begins in the middle of her life (also a characteristic of a short
story) and we do not know anything about what has happened before now. The narrator
explains how she lost her legs due to a dog who was not fed for over a week, leaving her as a
disabled teen. This event emphasizes the endless cycle of hunger in these communities, she
“had been so hungry I had fantasized about eating the same dog”. The sticker on her
mother’s guitar “EAT OR BE EATEN”(Nakutha 2006: 219) is the brutal realization of the
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