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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tsotsi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apartheid and Racism
Parents and Children
Identity and Memory
Hatred, Sympathy, and God
Habit vs. Choice
Summary
Analysis
Boston has been lying unconscious or drinking in a shebeen run by a woman, Marty, since Tsotsi beat him up. When Tsotsi locates Boston there, Marty is trying to rouse Boston and kick him out because he’s urinated on the floor. Tsotsi tells Marty to leave Boston alone. Marty asks what Tsotsi wants, and Tsotsi says he wants Boston. Marty, putting herself between the men, says she wouldn’t treat “a mad dog” the way Tsotsi treated Boston and asks Tsotsi what he has to say for himself. Tsotsi says he wants to talk to Boston. Marty lights a cigarette, shrugs, and agrees to let Tsotsi take him.
Marty’s claim that she wouldn’t treat even “a mad dog,” let alone a human, the way Tsotsi treated Boston implies that people should treat each other with some minimum standard of care just because of their shared group identity—their common humanity. Yet she lets Tsotsi take Boston away relatively quickly, which indicates that she doesn’t necessarily want to display that care toward Boston herself.
Themes
Tsotsi tries to wake Boston up but can’t. He picks Boston up and begins carrying him “like a baby” back to his room. On the way, Boston wakes, struggles out of Tsotsi’s grip, and runs. Tsotsi follows Boston until he collapses near a fence with a sign on it that says, “WE WON’T MOVE.” Tsotsi puts Boston on his feet and walks him toward Tsotsi’s room. When Boston collapses, Tsotsi carries him the rest of the way.
When Tsotsi carries Boston “like a baby,” the novel suggests that Tsotsi’s new parental identity is making him gentler and more sympathetic toward someone he has previously harmed. The “WE WON’T MOVE” sign, meanwhile, is an allusion to Black protests against the government’s relocation of non-white populations to enforce racial segregation. It reminds the reader that the novel is taking place against a larger context in which the government is demolishing Black neighborhoods—foreshadowing that this context may become important later.
Themes
In the room, Tsotsi puts Boston to bed, removes his soiled clothes, and throws them away. Seeing Boston naked, Tsotsi realizes Boston is extremely thin, his eye swollen, his nose broken, and his mouth sliced up. Tsotsi feels like vomiting. He checks how much money he has and goes out to buy food. When he returns with bread and sourmilk, Boston is still immobile on the bed. Tsotsi eats and watches him.
Once again, Tsotsi is caring for Boston as he has previously cared for the baby: throwing out his soiled clothes, putting him to bed, and so forth. That he cares for Boston—and that he wants to vomit when he sees the physical damage he’s inflicted on Boston—shows how much his character has changed since the novel’s beginning, when he felt only hatred for Boston.
Themes
Boston was born Walter Nguza in Umtata to a “humble, tired old woman.” He went to St. John’s College, to St. Peter’s High School in Johannesburg, and finally to a teacher’s college. His first two years in college, he came first in his class. Though he was a small, bespectacled man who couldn’t get women, his mother was “very proud” of him. Then, the year he would have graduated, the school expelled him “for trying to rape a fellow student.”
Umtata (now called Mthatha) is a small city almost 375 miles south of Johannesburg. That Boston was able to travel so far for high school, and did so well in college, suggests that despite his “humble, tired” family and oppressed social position within apartheid South Africa, he was somewhat upwardly mobile before his expulsion for attempted rape. The repeated mentions of his mother, meanwhile, foreshadow that she may be important to the rest of his story.
Themes
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In a flashback, it’s revealed that Boston wrote the preceding account of his life some time after his expulsion. He likes it because, without excess emotion or drama, it tells how his life progressed until it “broke.” One time, when he reads it aloud to members of his gang, they ask him what happened afterward. He tells them nothing did: after the rape accusation, everything was “finished.” They ask him about the girl, but he can’t tell them.
Earlier in the novel, Tsotsi used the word “finished” to end his criminal career when Die Aap suggested they form a new gang. Boston uses the same word, “finished,” to describe how his old life “broke.” The repetition suggests that the novel uses the word “finished” to mark major changes in identity. Just as Tsotsi definitively “finished” being a gang member and has to become something new, so Boston moved in the other direction—he “finished” being a student and became a gang member after he attempted to rape someone.
Themes
Boston does tell the story once. He says he was going for a walk at night when he met a fellow student, female, by the tennis courts. Girls frightened Boston, and he wanted to flee, but she struck up a conversation with him. She began the physical contact with him, but she “just wanted to play.” Not realizing this, he tried to go further. She began screaming and crying, and Boston was discovered with her like that.
Boston’s story suggests that he tried to rape the girl because he didn’t understand her—in other words, he didn’t adequately sympathize with her perspective. He was unable to grasp that she “just wanted to play”—that is, to have some romantic contact but not sex—and so ended up attacking her. The story, then, strengthens the connection the novel has previously drawn between a lack of sympathy for others and violent behavior.
Themes
Boston wonders who, if anyone, is to blame—himself, the girl, those who discovered them, or even Boston’s mother—but decides it’s all the same, because regardless, it ends with his expulsion. This event makes Boston think about mistakes. When he is 24 and drunk, he declares everything a mistake: “The whole bloody thing, from beginning to end, from Adam to Walter Boston Nguza is one big mistake.”
By “Adam,” Boston means the first man God created in the Bible. Rather than take individual responsibility for his attempted rape of the other student, Boston decides that mistakes like his are inherent to human identity and that humanity is therefore “one big mistake.”
Themes
After his expulsion, Boston goes to the railway station for a late train. Waiting at the station, he pictures his “proud” mother greeting him and realizes he can’t bear to go home. Instead he writes his mother a letter saying he finished teacher’s college early, is going to look for a job, and will send her a new address soon.
By lying to and avoiding his mother, Boston continues the novel’s pattern of children separated from their parents. Unlike the separation of Tsotsi from his mother or of Miriam’s husband from his baby, however, this separation occurs due to Boston’s desire to protect his mother’s pride, not due to the social context of apartheid.
Themes
After spending a week homeless in the city, Boston meets Johnboy Lethetwa at the Pass Office. Boston goes to the Pass Office because he has a relative there he plans to ask for help. When he arrives, he waits outside and thinks. He’s worried the relative will tell his mother and unsure what he should ask for. Johnboy sits beside him and asks Boston to read a piece of paper for him. Boston tells him the paper says, “you can’t work at Natty Outfitters because your last employer did not sign your book.” Johnboy says, “They’ll pick me up.” Boston asks why the employer didn’t sign the book, and Johnboy explains he was in jail because he didn’t have a previous employer.
As previously mentioned, Black South Africans under apartheid were required to carry passes (or “pass books”) that determined where they were allowed to go. If Black people didn’t have all the right entries in their pass book—including the signature of a white employer—they could be arrested and put in jail. Johnboy’s story highlights the illogic and cruelty of apartheid pass laws: to get an employer—and stay out of jail—Black people needed to have had an employer already.
Themes
Boston asks to see Johnboy’s pass, fills it out and signs it, and tells Johnboy he now has a previous employer. Johnboy takes the pass and leaves. Boston is about to go inside to speak with his relative when Johnboy returns, hands Boston four more passbooks, and asks for previous employers. When Boston balks, Johnboy gives Boston two 10-shilling notes. Boston signs the passbooks. Johnboy brings back more.
In this passage, the reader sees a new side to Boston’s character. Whereas previously he has been drunk, cowardly, and violent, here he uses his education generously to help a man in danger of being jailed due to an unjust, racist law. Ironically, this generous act begins a criminal career in forgery—which shows how unjust apartheid laws drive many of the novel’s characters to criminal behavior.
Themes
By lunchtime, Boston has earned four pounds. Johnboy suggests they “specialize in previous employers” and asks Boston where he lives. When Boston admits he’s homeless, Johnboy offers to share his hostel room. Boston writes his mother a letter, with a pound note in it, telling her he’s doing well.
Johnboy’s suggestion that he and Boston “specialize in previous employers” reveals a demand for forgeries to protect Black South Africans from unjust, racist pass laws—which again shows how unjust apartheid laws drive crime. That Boston sends money to his mother as soon as he’s earned anything, meanwhile, implies how important she is to him and how badly he wants to conceal his difficult circumstances from her.
Themes
Boston and Johnboy begin forging various permits as well as employers’ signatures. Boston keeps sending his mother money. Boston realizes he and Johnboy are not similar people, but that doesn’t bother him. Boston goes to shebeens to think and drink until, without realizing it, he’s developed a drinking problem.
The expansion of Boston’s forgeries from passbooks to other required permits suggests how many different ways bureaucracy under apartheid oppressed Black South Africans. Boston’s drinking problem, meanwhile, illustrates how bad behavior can develop into a habit, difficult to break.
Themes
At Marty’s shebeen, Boston meets another gang. One day, after Johnboy is arrested for the passbook business, Boston overhears the gang talking about a problem. Boston suggests an obvious answer. The gang offers him part of their haul, and eventually he becomes a member. Meanwhile, he is receiving letters from his mother begging him to visit. One day, he dresses up himself and Butcher, has their photograph taken, and sends it home with a letter claiming he is working as a teacher and Boston is his coworker.
Boston’s transition from Johnboy’s non-violent forgery business to Tsotsi’s violent gang hints that once you are in the habit of criminal activity, you are more likely to graduate to more serious crimes. Boston’s deceitful correspondence with his mother shows both how much he cares about her pride and how ashamed he is of his situation.
Themes
In the shebeen subculture, Boston gains a reputation as an intelligent but timid person who abuses alcohol “after a rough job.” Yet his good manners endear him to Marty. They strike up a friendship and then a romance, but their romance ends the first time Boston does a job where someone is murdered. Afterwards, he takes his misery out on Marty and “drag[s] her down as low as his words.” Marty doesn’t retaliate, but their relationship—the sole romance of Boston’s life—ends. Boston regrets his cruelty to her. Because the police are searching for Boston’s gang, they disperse, and Boston avoids Marty’s. He approaches her later, but she treats him like a stranger. Then, two years later, he comes to her the night Tsotsi beats him up.
Boston’s reliance on alcohol to deal with “a rough job”—the violence that occasionally comes with gang activity—shows how bad habits (in this case, alcohol abuse and violence) can be mutually reinforcing. His cruel treatment of Marty due to his own guilt hints that people who hate themselves—who do not have a positive individual identity—are more likely to be hateful toward others.
Themes
Back in the present, Boston wakes up in the dark and asks where he is. Tsotsi lights a candle, and they stare at each other. At first, Boston is scared, but then he remembers how totally Tsotsi destroyed him and his “manhood” and he stops being scared. He closes his eyes and asks why Tsotsi brought him to his room. Tsotsi says he wants to talk. Boston doesn’t care, though this event would once have delighted him. Boston draws Tsotsi’s attention to the physical damage he’s done, and Tsotsi replies, “I felt you.” Boston is curious what Tsotsi means, but the curiosity passes.
Like Morris Tshabalala, who seemed to think that crying made him less of a man, Boston seems to think that being physically beaten destroys his masculine identity, his “manhood.” In Boston’s case, his failure to live up to masculine stereotypes makes him passive and uninterested in what’s going on around him. Tsotsi, by contrast, is trying to reach out to Boston and express sympathy with him by saying, “I felt you.”
Themes
Boston says, “My youth,” because he has been thinking about it since Tsotsi beat him. Tsotsi says he needs to know and demands that Boston, who used to be a teacher, tell him. Boston thinks he sees a light in Tsotsi’s eyes that wasn’t there before. He denies knowing anything. Tsotsi, thinking Boston means something else, tells him about the baby. Boston ponders the story’s meaning, loses concentration, and blurts out, “The fields of my youth.”
Tsotsi’s memories of childhood motivate him to try to understand and change his present life. By contrast, Boston’s memories of his “youth”—before he derailed his life with the attempted rape—leave him unmotivated and pessimistic. This contrast suggests that while remembering the past is necessary to understanding and taking control of your life, memory alone isn’t sufficient—you also need to believe in your own power to change. Notably, Tsotsi has already changed a great deal by this point in the novel: whereas at the novel’s beginning he beat Boston for asking him too many questions, now he is volunteering information about his relationship with the baby that Boston hasn’t asked for.
Themes
Tsotsi doesn’t understand what Boston means, reflects on his own ignorance, and starts sweating. He tells Boston about stalking Morris and sparing his life. Boston listens but loses his train of thought thinking about mercy and the fields of his youth. He tries to catch the thread of Tsotsi’s story, hears something about a yellow dog and Tsotsi’s mother, and is surprised by Tsotsi having a mother. He recalls his own mother and wonders whether she’s still waiting for him to come home.
Again, the novel associates the yellow dog with Tsotsi’s mother, emphasizing that the yellow dog represents Tsotsi’s separation from his mother—and, by implication, apartheid’s destruction of Black families more generally. As Die Aap was surprised in an earlier chapter that Tsotsi has a mother, so Boston is surprised here, a repetition that underlines how the other gang members don’t see Tsotsi as fully human (after all, as Tsotsi has realized, every human being has a mother).
Themes
Tsotsi explains that he only started remembering his childhood the day before. Sitting by the bed, he points out that Boston has read books and asks him what the story means. Boston says everyone is sick from life. Tsotsi’s head falls, and Boston feels intense sympathy for his pain. He touches Tsotsi and tells him that he, Boston, is totally ignorant, but that Tsotsi is “different” because he’s changing. He urges Tsotsi not to be scared. Tsotsi asks what changed him, and Boston replies that Tsotsi is now talking about God.
Boston’s claim that everyone is sick from life indicates his pessimism and hopelessness. Yet his sympathy for Tsotsi’s pain motivates him to recognize that while he, Boston, may not be able to break free from his destructive habits or his criminal identity, Tsotsi can. His explicit association of Tsotsi’s transformation with God, here, suggests that human sympathy has a religious source.
Themes
Tsotsi sits quietly through the night. Boston sings part of a hymn, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” Dawn comes. Boston speaks again about the fields of his youth and begins to leave. Tsotsi holds him back, but Boston tells him he needs to leave and insists that the fields of his youth were green. Tsotsi gives Boston clothing and offers him food, which Boston refuses. He watches Boston flee down the street.
The hymn “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” includes lyrics referring to the singer’s childhood and Jesus’s own childhood, as well as a prayer that the singer be more like Jesus. The allusion to the hymn here thus reinforces the importance of childhood to both Boston and Tsotsi’s lives and foreshadows that someone in the novel may imitate Christ in some way. By offering clothing and food to Boston, whom he recently beat, , Tsotsi demonstrates his rejection of his old “gangster” identity and his violent habits.
Themes
