Long Walk to Freedom Themes

Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom describes Mandela’s life in South Africa primarily during the apartheid era, when racial segregation is an official government policy. As a Black man in the country, Mandela experiences racism in ways big and small, and he also witnesses it happening to others. Mandela first experiences this racism at school and in his law career, when White people try to assert dominance over him by making him do chores…

Although today, Nelson Mandela is widely admired for his political and social justice accomplishments, his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom shows how his ideas were controversial in their time, earning many admirers for his bravery but also facing opposition from all sides. Mandela’s primary opponents throughout the book are the Nationalists, a political party in South Africa dedicated to apartheid, a form of legally-sanctioned white supremacy. Although the Nationalists are supposedly democratically elected, only…

Even at the darkest moments of his life, like during his more than 27 years in prison at Robben Island, Pollsmoor, and Victor Verster, Nelson Mandela maintained a sense of optimism, calling himself “fundamentally an optimist.” As Mandela makes clear in his autobiography, it’s possible to be optimistic even while acknowledging the problems and injustices of the world. In fact, Mandela believes that being optimistic is an essential part of his liberation struggle, and…