30 pages • 1 hour read
Nadine GordimerThe Moment Before the Gun Went Off
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Dehumanizing Nature of Racism
By forcing the reader to inhabit the mind of a deeply racist main character, one embedded in an equally racist community, Gordimer forces the reader to face the dehumanizing nature of racism. The mundanity of the racism that permeates Van der Vyver’s self-centered thoughts speaks to the insidious strength of that dehumanization. Gordimer, by extension, points out how embedded the dehumanization of Black people is in her society under the system of apartheid.
Racism shapes Van der Vyver’s priorities. Van der Vyver may have wept at the police station. But if that moment of grief was purely for the death of his son, which is a generous assumption, his thoughts for the rest of the story center on his concerns for the preservation of his own status and power. He is consumed with pity for himself. His community re-enforces these conclusions. It is “[b]ad enough to have killed a man” (Paragraph 3); the real tragedy at hand, though, is that this accident will aid “the Party’s, the government’s, the country’s enemies” (Paragraph 3). Those community members who call with condolences, they refer to the death of the young man as “‘that business’ with one of Ven der Vyver’s boys” (Paragraph 11). The implication, of course, is that things “could have been worse” (Paragraph 11), that is, if Ven der Vyver himself had been hurt.
The dehumanization of Black people also emerges in infantilization and comparisons of Black characters to animals. There is both foreshadowing and a grim parallel in Van der Vyver noting that he “sees it as the farmer's sacred duty to raise game as well as cattle” just before he picks up Lucas, “whom Van der Vyver himself had taught” important skills (Paragraph 7). As Ven der Vyver relates the event that follows, he uses simile to liken the young man to the animal: Ven der Vyver was sure “he had leapt up and toppled—in fright, like the buck” (Paragraph 14). While in these instances Van der Vyver is not explicitly casting Black people as animals, he is laying a foundation for his broader perception of the young man’s death: while the death is unfortunate, it is not worthy of the grief that the death of a fellow human would evoke. The “young wife,” in turn, “cries like a child, sobbing on the breast of this relative and that” (Paragraph 13). She “is pregnant (of course) and another little one […] leans under her jutting belly” (Paragraph 12). Van der Vyver’s crass references to her pregnancy, as well as his later observation that “they start bearing children at puberty” (Paragraph 13), suggest a further comparison to animals.
The Importance of Perception
Gordimer explores the importance of perception in this short story on several levels. On one level, as discussed above, the story’s impact is rooted in the author’s use of a racist main character; Van der Vyver and his community instinctively dehumanize the Black people around them, so stepping into the perception of Van der Vyver should be deeply uncomfortable for the reader. On another level, Gordimer points out how perception both sustains and is shaped by existing power structures.
The story highlights how those in power are unaccustomed to being made visible, that is, being presented for judgment outside their own circle of control, especially in a negative light. After the accident with Lucas, Van der Vyver is disproportionately worried about the press and its interpretations of Lucas’s death. He laments that the event “has gone on record, and will be there in the archive of the local police station as long as Van der Vyver lives” (Paragraph 10). Van der Vyver notes his history of hiding from attention, even in his youth: “as a little boy who would go away and hide himself if he caught you smiling at him” (Paragraph 4). Today, “everyone knows him now as a man who hides any change of expression round his mouth behind a thick, soft moustache, and in his eyes, by always looking at some object in hand” (Paragraph 4). Later, at the funeral, Van der Vyver seems to reassure himself that the mother of the young man—that is, the mother of his dead son—will not perceive or judge him: she “does not look up, she does not look at Van der Vyver, whose gun went off in the truck […] Nothing will make her look up, there need be no fear that she will look up, at him” (Paragraph 13). In short, the story evokes dread, on the part of Van der Vyver, over the mounting sense that he is about to be fully seen.
The tension between being perceived and Van der Vyver’s wish to remain unseen plays into the tension related to the theme of Impending Change in Power Structures. Van der Vyver is unaccustomed to having his word questioned. His self-reassurance is present as well in his insistence to himself that his word is beyond reproach: the only reason for the inevitable inquiry is “to stop the assumption of yet another case of brutality against farm workers” (Paragraph 5). Surely “there’s nothing in doubt […] all the facts fully admitted by Van der Vyver” (Paragraph 5). Yet his confidence appears subtly shaken, given that he had to yield to the requirement of affirming the truth of his claims, which he views as an inconvenience and sign of disrespect: “[a]lthough a man of such standing in the district, Van der Vyver had to go through the ritual of swearing that it was the truth” (Paragraph 10).
Often, in hierarchical power systems, those at the top benefit from a certain invisibility: they determine what is natural and normal, allowing them to ‘other’ anyone different. Evidence of such othering is present throughout the story, especially during the funeral and at the story’s ironic ending. Van der Vyver, even in his bitter assessments of the anti-apartheid movement, always distinguishes Black people from white people: there are “the agitators,” who are Black, and then there are “the whites who encourage them” (Paragraph 10). At the funeral, Van der Vyver makes several observations about Black people, who he perceives as a single unit: “an elaborate funeral means a great deal to blacks” (Paragraph 12). In each case, the characteristic or tendency he assigns to Black people is something that distinguishes them from white people and, therefore, something distasteful: “look how they will deprive themselves of the little they have, in their life-time, keeping up payments to a burial society so they won't go in boxwood to an unmarked grave” (Paragraph 12).
Impending Change to Power Structures
Nadine Gordimer published “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off” in 1988, toward the tail end of the apartheid era. At that time, there were major international campaigns against South Africa’s apartheid policy. “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off” captures this historical moment, when change was threatening to unravel South Africa’s tradition of apartheid. At the top of Van der Vyver’s anxieties are how the opposition may use this incident to undermine the racist structures that uphold his position of power. The opposition, as he sees it, seems to comprise “Americans and English” as well as city-dwelling South Africans who “want to destroy the white man’s power” (Paragraph 4). These parties may use this incident “in their boycott and divestment campaigns,” turning “he and the black man” into “those crudely-drawn figures on anti-apartheid banners” (Paragraph 2).
However, though Van der Vyver senses the impending change, his racism prevents him from imagining a world in which Black people are equal to him within the social hierarchy. Power, by nature, belongs to white people. In his perspective, it by white people’s grace that Black people have made the shocking gains they already have: “Blacks can sit and drink in white hotels, now, the Immorality Act has gone, blacks can sleep with whites… It’s not even a crime any more” (Paragraph 10). Frustrated by an apparent lack of gratitude, he observes that “[n]othing satisfies them, in the cities” (Paragraph 10). The Black people there, egged on by “the whites who encourage them” (Paragraph 10), are greedy and undeserving; Van der Vyver struggles to grasp why they don’t accept what little they’ve been given.
When Van der Vyver envisions the future, he pictures violence in South Africa as a result of these changes. He knows that his statement about his crime will remain in the police station for generations to come—unless, he concedes, “things in the country get worse […] and the place is burned down as many urban police stations have been” (Paragraph 6). Van der Vyver recognizes that change has already started to come for the cities, areas where more South Africans are pro-integration, and he worries that their violent protests will start occurring in his rural region, too. In some ways, they already have; agitators have mined farm areas, leading to the deaths of white farmers “out on their own property for a Sunday picnic” (Paragraph 7). As a result, his region now has an extensive security system and patrol.
Lucas’s mother, with her loaded gaze at the funeral, brings this tension to its peak. Van der Vyver stands at the funeral, eyes also locked on Lucas’s grave, and reassures himself that “there need be no fear that she will look up, at him” (Paragraph 13). Alida, Van der Vyver’s wife, stands beside him, representing the great effort that the white people in his community put into pretending that nothing is amiss—that any apparent harm done to Black people is dismissible as a mere “accident.” However, Lucas’s mother summons the image of the quietly loaded rifle, seemingly innocuous but nonetheless deadly. Her presence and response, as well as Van der Vyver’s reaction, hint at the grander change looming for the racist power structures in the country.
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