Dry White Season by Andre Brink Essay

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Dry White Season

In Andre Brink's novel A Dry White Season, the background of apartheid-era South Africa sets the stage for a legal battle which challenged the racial policies of the period. During Apartheid, the governmental regime set about a system of government-sanctioned racism which forced the black people of the area to suffer greatly. The story is on the surface a murder mystery which then enters the genre of political thriller. The central character of the story is white school teacher Ben du Toit. Although he begins the story as a selfish man concerned more with preserving the status quo and with it his own protection than in investigating the brutality of an assault on an innocent young man. Through the course of the story, du Toit evolves into a man who cannot stand by while allowing the present racist government policy to continue on unquestioned. His selfishness morphs from a single-minded determination to stay out of the situation into a single-minded determination to find the answer regarding who murdered his gardener Jonathan. In that regard, Ben du Toit begins the story as a selfish man and ends the story as a selfish man as well. Although the target of his selfishness changes from himself to the society around him, he still allows his determination to prohibit him from being influenced by the people around him or fulfilling his responsibilities to the people who care about him, including his wife.

Schoolteacher Ben du Toit had never been an exciting man. He was a teacher with an ambitious wife who made dollhouses to relax. When Gordon Ngubene, a man who was both the janitor at du Toit's school and a personal friend, comes to du Toit for help when he cannot find his son after a violent excursion with police forces, du Toit's instinct is to protect himself. Instead of going to the police directly for information about Jonathan Ngubene, du Toit goes through an intermediary: a lawyer with no real feeling about the case at all. Du Toit agrees to pay this lawyer money for supposedly gathering information about Jonathan.

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The lawyer Levinson says in a most inappropriate tone, "Now don't you worry…we'll give them hell. By the way, do we have your address on the account?" (43). Levinson's investigation consisted of writing letters and making phone calls which helped nothing.

This complacency changed when he became personally affected by the violence of South Africa. Gordon Ngubene had been killed by government forces and his son Jonathan before that. Jonathan Ngubene was killed during a youth riot where a group of young men marched on Johannesburg to protest the racist Apartheid laws. These marches, part of a series were designed to show the government the dissatisfaction of the nation's youth and would often turn into violent bloodshed, not least of all because the government would send armed men to combat the protestors. "It happened in July, in one of the demonstrations which by then had become an almost daily ritual: children and youths assembling for a march to Johannesburg, police converging in armoured trucks, long rattling bursts of automatic gunfire, a hail of stones and bricks and bottles…Shots, shouts, dogs" (41). It is easier to ignore violence in the abstract than to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the murder of someone you know. This is what happens to du Toit. In one context he becomes less selfish because he is concerned with the lives of another group of people besides himself.

Even after witnessing the inefficacy of this lawyer, du Toit does not get his hands dirty by getting directly involved with the police. Although he is sympathetic to Ngubene, his priority is still very….....

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