The Moment Before the Gun Went Off

Lucas is a 20-year-old Black laborer on Marais Van der Vyver’s farm, who Van der Vyver accidentally kills in a gun accident. Lucas is Van der Vyver’s illegitimate son; his mother is also a laborer on the farm, and Van der Vyver knew her as a child.

The reader learns about Lucas only through the filter of Van der Vyver’s racist perception, which highlights the themes of both The Dehumanizing Nature of Racism and The Importance of Perception. Van der Vyver seems to perceive Lucas as a sort of pet, one he feels a responsibility to nurture, albeit not to respect. Van der Vyver describes Lucas as a “friend,” only to reflect on how he defines a friend when it comes to the young Black man: “farmers usually have one particular black boy they like to take along with them in the lands: you could call it a kind of friend, yes, friends are not only your own white people, like yourself, you take into your house, pray with in church and work with on the Party committee” (Paragraph 4). Indeed, the narrator notes that Van der Vyver often “would pass the young man without returning a greeting, as if he did not recognize him” (Paragraph 14).

The implication is that, while Van der Vyver may have felt a certain fondness for Lucas, he did not view the young man as fully human because Lucas was not white. When Van der Vyver mentally lists his children, Lucas is not among them. In short, Lucas illuminates how powerfully racism permeates Van der Vyver’s world view. Not even Van der Vyver’s blood relation to the young man could overcome his racism.

Alida Van der Vyver, Marais Van der Vyver’s wife, is a minor and static character in the story who helps develop the theme of The Importance of Perception. The narrator describes Alida as “always supportive, although he [Van der Vyver] doesn’t seem to notice it” (Paragraph 9). Her support represents the ways in which appearances assist with maintaining existing racist power structures.

The few references to Alida all relate to her concerns about appearance, suggesting how efforts to hide injustice are key to avoiding change. Alida believes the “high barbed security fence […] spoils completely the effect of her artificial stream withs its tree-ferns” (Paragraph 7). At Lucas’s funeral, she wears her “navy-blue-and-cream hat” for the funeral in order “to show the proper respect, as for any white funeral” (Paragraph 9). In both cases, her aim is to portray an image of a false reality, one in which there is no division in society, or at least, one in which the division is beneficial for all. Efforts like hers to ignore the social and political violence in South Africa indeed support figures like Van der Vyver.

Lucas’s relatives represent those lower than Van der Vyver in the social hierarchy of South Africa: “All present work for Van der Vyver or are the families of those who work […] the women and children work for him, too” (Paragraph 13). Accordingly, Lucas’s family elicits reactions from Van der Vyver that make The Dehumanizing Nature of Racism explicit. Van der Vyver, after many references to Lucas as a “boy,” infantilizes Lucas’s grieving wife as well: she “rolls her head and cries like a child” (Paragraph 13). The wife’s pregnancy is greeted with a resigned sort of disgust: “[t]he young wife is pregnant (of course)” (Paragraph 12), situated within his broader observation that “they [Black women] start bearing children puberty” (Paragraph 13). Van der Vyver did not view Lucas, his biological son, as fully human; similarly, here, he does not view the Black children with any empathy.

Lucas’s young son, who stands beside his Lucas’s weeping wife, hints at The Importance of Perception. Van der Vyver assumes the child “is too young to understand what has happened” (Paragraph 12). Simultaneously, Van der Vyver observes with apparent scorn that Black parents, such as Lucas’s mother, allow their children to see “fear and pain” (Paragraph 12) while white parents protect their children from such sights. Throughout the story, Van der Vyver focuses on the fact that the shooting was an accident, viewing himself as more of a victim than Lucas—he cannot perceive himself as ever having caused Lucas harm. Similarly, in observing the solemnity of Lucas’s child, Van der Vyver fails to grasp his role in the structures that force Black children to reckon with violence that white children get to avoid.

Lucas’s mother, through the anxiety her potential gaze evokes in Van der Vyver, hints at Impending Change to Power Structures. Despite not being past her 30s, she “is heavily mature in a black dress” (Paragraph 9). She stands between her parents, who “hold her as if she were a prisoner or crazy woman” (Paragraph 9). These descriptions suggest a character who has endured a great deal. Yet, she only stares at Lucas’s grave in silence. Van der Vyver seems to reassure himself that “there need be no fear that she will look up, at him” (Paragraph 13). However, the tension is palpable as she and Van der Vyver “stare at the grave in communication like that between the black man outside and the white man inside the cab before the gun went off” (Paragraph 13). The woman herself, or at least this moment in time, is much like the loaded rifle.