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Elderly Woman
Gumboot Dhlamini works in the mines near Johannesburg and lives in one of its townships. He came to Johannesburg from far away in South Africa, where he lived with his pregnant wife, to make some money. After a year working in the mines and writing letters to his wife at home, he has almost saved enough money that he feels he can return to her. Then Tsotsi, searching for someone his gang can rob and kill on the trains, spots Gumboot because of his bright smile, colorful tie, and full pay packet. On the train, Die Aap pins Gumboot’s arms while Butcher stabs him with a bicycle spoke, Boston steals his money, and Tsotsi insults him as he’s dying. The Rev. Henry Ransome, presiding over Gumboot’s funeral at the township’s dilapidated cemetery, finds himself disturbed that he doesn’t even know the dead man’s name. Gumboot’s short life, violent death, and anonymous burial point to the cruelty of life for poor non-white workers under apartheid.
Gumboot Dhlamini Quotes in Tsotsi
The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by Gumboot Dhlamini or refer to Gumboot Dhlamini. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
[Tsotsi’s] own eyes in front of a mirror had not been able to put together the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth and the chin, and make a man with meaning. His own features in his own eyes had been as meaningless as a handful of stones picked up at random in the street outside his room. He allowed himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays, and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living moment. He was as old as that moment, and his name was the name, in a way, of all men.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5
Quotes
Gumboot had been allocated a plot near the centre. He was buried by the Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township. The minister went through the ritual with uncertainty. He was disturbed, and he knew it and that made it worse. If only he had known the name of the man he was burying. This man, O Lord! What man? This one, fashioned in your likeness.
Chapter 7
Quotes
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
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Gumboot Dhlamini Quotes in Tsotsi
The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by Gumboot Dhlamini or refer to Gumboot Dhlamini. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
[Tsotsi’s] own eyes in front of a mirror had not been able to put together the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth and the chin, and make a man with meaning. His own features in his own eyes had been as meaningless as a handful of stones picked up at random in the street outside his room. He allowed himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays, and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living moment. He was as old as that moment, and his name was the name, in a way, of all men.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5
Quotes
Gumboot had been allocated a plot near the centre. He was buried by the Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township. The minister went through the ritual with uncertainty. He was disturbed, and he knew it and that made it worse. If only he had known the name of the man he was burying. This man, O Lord! What man? This one, fashioned in your likeness.
Chapter 7
Quotes
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
