Tsotsi

by

Athol Fugard

The Baby Character Analysis

The baby is a Black male infant. His frightened, desperate mother hides the baby in a shoebox, shoves the shoebox at Tsotsi, and runs away after Tsotsi waylays her—seemingly with the intent of raping her—in a grove of bluegum trees. The baby triggers a lost memory in Tsotsi of a yellow dog, so Tsotsi brings the baby back to his room in hopes of regaining more memories. Inside the box, Tsotsi discovers the baby is wrapped in “a torn petticoat and an old pair of blue bloomers.” This detail—that the baby was wrapped in a woman’s castoff clothes—suggests that the baby’s mother was very poor and may have abandoned him because she could not support him financially, which further suggests that the baby is, like Tsotsi, a victim of Black families’ legal and economic oppression and destruction under apartheid. Caring for the baby alienates Tsotsi from the other members of his gang, Butcher and Die Aap, and Tsotsi ultimately decides to give up gang life. Tsotsi coerces a young mother, Miriam Ngidi, into breastfeeding and caring for the baby. Though initially the dirty, sickly baby repulses Miriam, she begins to care for him and offers to adopt him. Tsotsi, who has given the baby his childhood name—David—and come to associate him with his childhood self, refuses and hides the baby in the demolished ruins of a Black township. When a nearby white township demands that the ruins be razed again, Tsotsi sacrifices his life trying to save the baby, but—although the novel does not say so explicitly—it seems likely the baby dies, too.

The Baby Quotes in Tsotsi

The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by The Baby or refer to The Baby. 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:
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

He didn’t see the man, he saw the type.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Cassim
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

This was man. This small, almost ancient, very useless and abandoned thing was the beginning of a man.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Boston, Cassim
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

Tsotsi knew one thing very definitely now. Starting last night, and maybe even before that, because sitting there with a quiet mind to the events of the past hours it seemed almost as if there might have been a beginning before the bluegum trees, but regardless of where or when, he had started doing things that did not fit into the pattern of his life. There was no doubt about this. The pattern was too simple, too clear, woven as it had been by his own hands, using his knife like a shuttle to carry the red thread of death and interlace it with others stained in equally sombre hues. The baby did not belong and certainly none of the actions that had been forced on him as a result of its presence, like buying baby milk, or feeding it or cleaning it or hiding it with more cunning and secrecy than other people hid what they had from him.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Die Aap, Butcher
Related Symbols: Tsotsi’s Knife
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Boston, Morris Tshabalala , Gumboot Dhlamini
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

So she carried on, outwardly adjusting the pattern of her life as best she could, like taking in washing, doing odd cleaning jobs in the nearby white suburb. Inwardly she had fallen into something like a possessive sleep where the same dream is dreamt over and over again. She seldom smiled now, kept to herself and her baby, asked no favours and gave none, hoarding as it were the moments and things in her life.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

On she came, until a foot or so away the chain stopped her, and although she pulled at this with her teeth until her breathing was tense and rattled she could go no further, so she lay down there, twisting her body so that the hindquarters fell apart and, like that, fighting all the time, her ribs heaving, she gave birth to the stillborn litter, and then died beside them.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Related Symbols: Yellow Dog
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

The baby and David, himself that is, at first confused, had now merged into one and the same person. The police raid, the river, and Petah, the spider spinning his web, the grey day and the smell of damp newspapers were a future awaiting the baby. It was outside itself. He could sympathize with it in its defencelessness against the terrible events awaiting it.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Last night I was sad and I bent on my knees and did pray for something and a voice said, “Why should I give you what you ask me for, when you got no milk for babies.” Please give him to me.’

Related Characters: Miriam Ngidi (speaker), Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:

‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘Keep him.’

‘Why?’

He threw back his head, and she saw the shine of desperation on his forehead as he struggled with that mighty word. Why, why was he? No more revenge. No more hate. The riddle of the yellow bitch was solved—all of this in a few days and in as short a time the hold on his life by the blind, black, minute hands had grown tighter. Why?

‘Because I must find out,’ he said.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Miriam Ngidi (speaker), The Baby, Boston, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Related Symbols: Yellow Dog
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

‘Why Boston? What did do it?’

A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’

‘God.’

‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Boston (speaker), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, Morris Tshabalala , Rev. Henry Ransome
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

‘Come man and join in the singing.’

‘Me!’

‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’

‘Yes.’

‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Isaiah (speaker), The Baby, Boston, Morris Tshabalala
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:

It was a new day and what he had thought out last night was still there, inside him. Only one thing was important to him now. ‘Come back,’ the woman had said. ‘Come back, Tsotsi.’

I must correct her, he thought. ‘My name is David Madondo.’

He said it aloud in the almost empty street, and laughed. The man delivering milk heard him, and looking up said, ‘Peace my brother.’

‘Peace be with you’, David Madondo replied and carried on his way.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi
Page Number: 224-225
Explanation and Analysis:

The slum clearance had entered a second and decisive stage. The white township had grown impatient. The ruins, they said, were being built up again and as many were still coming in as they carried off in lorries to the new locations or in vans to the jails. So they had sent in the bulldozers to raze the buildings completely to the ground.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:

They unearthed him minutes later. All agreed that his smile was beautiful, and strange for a tsotsi, and that when he lay there on his back in the sun, before someone had fetched a blanket, they agreed that it was hard to believe what the back of his head looked like when you saw the smile.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Tsotsi LitChart as a printable PDF.
Tsotsi PDF

The Baby Quotes in Tsotsi

The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by The Baby or refer to The Baby. 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:
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

He didn’t see the man, he saw the type.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Cassim
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

This was man. This small, almost ancient, very useless and abandoned thing was the beginning of a man.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Boston, Cassim
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

Tsotsi knew one thing very definitely now. Starting last night, and maybe even before that, because sitting there with a quiet mind to the events of the past hours it seemed almost as if there might have been a beginning before the bluegum trees, but regardless of where or when, he had started doing things that did not fit into the pattern of his life. There was no doubt about this. The pattern was too simple, too clear, woven as it had been by his own hands, using his knife like a shuttle to carry the red thread of death and interlace it with others stained in equally sombre hues. The baby did not belong and certainly none of the actions that had been forced on him as a result of its presence, like buying baby milk, or feeding it or cleaning it or hiding it with more cunning and secrecy than other people hid what they had from him.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Die Aap, Butcher
Related Symbols: Tsotsi’s Knife
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Boston, Morris Tshabalala , Gumboot Dhlamini
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

So she carried on, outwardly adjusting the pattern of her life as best she could, like taking in washing, doing odd cleaning jobs in the nearby white suburb. Inwardly she had fallen into something like a possessive sleep where the same dream is dreamt over and over again. She seldom smiled now, kept to herself and her baby, asked no favours and gave none, hoarding as it were the moments and things in her life.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

On she came, until a foot or so away the chain stopped her, and although she pulled at this with her teeth until her breathing was tense and rattled she could go no further, so she lay down there, twisting her body so that the hindquarters fell apart and, like that, fighting all the time, her ribs heaving, she gave birth to the stillborn litter, and then died beside them.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Related Symbols: Yellow Dog
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

The baby and David, himself that is, at first confused, had now merged into one and the same person. The police raid, the river, and Petah, the spider spinning his web, the grey day and the smell of damp newspapers were a future awaiting the baby. It was outside itself. He could sympathize with it in its defencelessness against the terrible events awaiting it.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Last night I was sad and I bent on my knees and did pray for something and a voice said, “Why should I give you what you ask me for, when you got no milk for babies.” Please give him to me.’

Related Characters: Miriam Ngidi (speaker), Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:

‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘Keep him.’

‘Why?’

He threw back his head, and she saw the shine of desperation on his forehead as he struggled with that mighty word. Why, why was he? No more revenge. No more hate. The riddle of the yellow bitch was solved—all of this in a few days and in as short a time the hold on his life by the blind, black, minute hands had grown tighter. Why?

‘Because I must find out,’ he said.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Miriam Ngidi (speaker), The Baby, Boston, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Related Symbols: Yellow Dog
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

‘Why Boston? What did do it?’

A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’

‘God.’

‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Boston (speaker), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, Morris Tshabalala , Rev. Henry Ransome
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

‘Come man and join in the singing.’

‘Me!’

‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’

‘Yes.’

‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Isaiah (speaker), The Baby, Boston, Morris Tshabalala
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:

It was a new day and what he had thought out last night was still there, inside him. Only one thing was important to him now. ‘Come back,’ the woman had said. ‘Come back, Tsotsi.’

I must correct her, he thought. ‘My name is David Madondo.’

He said it aloud in the almost empty street, and laughed. The man delivering milk heard him, and looking up said, ‘Peace my brother.’

‘Peace be with you’, David Madondo replied and carried on his way.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi
Page Number: 224-225
Explanation and Analysis:

The slum clearance had entered a second and decisive stage. The white township had grown impatient. The ruins, they said, were being built up again and as many were still coming in as they carried off in lorries to the new locations or in vans to the jails. So they had sent in the bulldozers to raze the buildings completely to the ground.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:

They unearthed him minutes later. All agreed that his smile was beautiful, and strange for a tsotsi, and that when he lay there on his back in the sun, before someone had fetched a blanket, they agreed that it was hard to believe what the back of his head looked like when you saw the smile.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis: