How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitors Heart. Essays

How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitors Heart. Essays How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitors Heart. Essay How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitors Heart. Essay Malan wrote a different book to the one he set out to write but this finished autobiographical memoir was written because he was searching for a way to live in this strange country-for an alternative, if one existed, to the law of Dawid Malan. To live in this world he needs understand the world and in this quest he needs to understand the problems that his country must endure. The tale of the Hammermans murders is told by Malan but it is not told in his typical criminal journalist way it is told almost as if it were a story. Introducing the characters, telling the reader of their lives Dave and Jay used to smoke zol and jol, but theyve outgrown all that. Theyre both turning thirty, both newly turned onto free enterprise. Then once the reader has identified with them he (Malan) tells of their killings Jay is slumped against the wall, dead with a dozen hammer holes in his skull. His half naked wife is lying on the floor. Shed spent hours spinning around in a pool of her own blood, trying in vain to get up. In the section on the court case there are a few interjections, from Simon Mpungose but the main story is told through Rian Malan. Malan tells us of how eloquently Simon tells his story but much of this we cannot experience because we are not told this story by Simon we are told of what Malan remembers of the story. This eloquent speech is actually third hand when the reader comes to hear it. The translator translates Simons speech from to English. The minutes are then typed up by someone, from what the translator has said and then Malan reads these minutes and puts them into his book. Here Malan is putting across this black mans point of view but he is not really allowing him to do it himself This section devoted to the Hammerman is different to many of the other sections because there are much more quotations from Simon. These help us the reader to see his point of view, to see into his mind and maybe over this long distance from South Africa share some of the emotions that Simon feels. Maybe Malan allows Simon to better put his point across because he feels more empathy for him for the troubles he had to endure as a young man because of the apartheid laws. It is understandable but somehow strange of the sympathy Malan finds for the Hammerman. Although Simon struggled to live in the apartheid state and due to ver unfortunate circumstances was forced into poverty so were many other black people in South Africa and these people didnt go out on a six month murdering spree, brutally killing men and women in their beds, with a hammer used to kill pigs. Malan did not seem to feel the same sympathy for people like Samuel Mope.