Essay Questions

How does Mercia reveal the limitations of memoirs?

Wicomb writes, “Mercia, an English teacher, an academic, necessarily thinks of texts and their families, thus she will suffer with the anxiety of influence, but more importantly, she no longer feels like carrying on with her story. There is, as she always suspected, in the face of fiction and its possibilities, no point in telling the true tale, besides, she can’t vouch for the truth, since already there is more invention than memoir.” Memoirs could be embellished by authors; hence, their contents cannot be deemed to be unequivocal truths. Incorporation of fictional details in memoirs renders the memoir unreliable sources of truth.

Deconstruct the strategy which Mercia exploits in “post-Craig life.”

Wicomb writes, “Mercia has much to be thankful for. She knows that she will come to terms with being alone, which is not to say that she does not miss Craig she knew, that she is not still engulfed by sadness. But she has tried to make the most of post-Craig life by immersing herself in work." Mercia exploits sublimation by immersing herself in her work. Through sublimation she exhausts her mental and emotional energy on her work as an academic which saves her from the stress of mourning for her ended affair. The immersion is commendable because it does not results in destructive tendencies despite the agony of the breakup.

Why is Nicholas apprehensive about Mercia marrying a white man?

Wicomb reports, “We-ell, he (Nicholas) said, people say that European men at least here in South Africa are disrespectful, that they hate themselves for going with nonwhite women. He hesitated before adding, and that’s why they beat their wives, for separating them from their families and their country.” Nicholas is worried that Mercia would be subjected to domestic violence due to her race considering the pervasiveness of apartheid. Nicholas employs the generalization about white men to alert Mercia about the possibility of her affair turning worse. If it is accurate that the white men assault their non-white wives, then the men displace their pain on wives unnecessarily; the marriages are voluntarily.