The Setting Sun and the Rolling World

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

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Story 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Story 10 Summary: “The Lift”

Each day, after searching and failing to find jobs, two unnamed, unemployed boys go to the city center to ride the elevators in the tallest buildings. On this day, a security guard turns them away before letting two European boys enter the building without resistance.

With no money, the two boys go to Salisbury Park to sit on the benches until night falls and they can go home to sleep. One boy falls asleep on the bench, leaving the other to contemplate why he loves riding the elevators. The narrator observes, “He was tired of the whole circling process of his thoughts, so tired that he wanted movement—any movement, to feel that he was going somewhere and not just stationary” (105).

Annoyed with his companion’s restlessness, the sleepy boy moves to a different bench. The other boy reflects on the physical and emotional space between them, concluding that they are “not friends. Not quite friends” (106).

Story 10 Analysis

Aside from “The Brother,” which is told from the perspective of a young man merely visiting Harare, “The Lift” is the first story to depict what life is like for young would-be professionals in the city. The two unemployed boys are in a state of constant hunger, though for the thinner boy it is the stagnation that bothers him most. This is why he takes such joy in riding the elevator: It provides him with the illusion of mobility, helping him temporarily forget his desperate circumstances. Mungoshi reveals little about the two characters’ backgrounds, yet given the story’s placement directly after “The Setting Sun and the Rolling World,” it is not difficult to imagine that Nhamo will meet a similar fate as the two boys. This is an advantage of Mungoshi’s occasional tendency to leave major characters unnamed, which allows them to exist as universal stand-ins for characters in other stories.

Finally, “The Lift” introduces the collection’s earliest tensions between White European Zimbabweans and Zimbabweans of African descent. The scene of two European boys entering the building without question after the two African boys are turned away is short and goes unmentioned by the lead characters. The fact that the boys barely question it emphasizes the extent to which they’ve internalized everyday racism. Moreover, it is telling that Mungoshi depicts racism only after the setting migrates fully to Harare. This may imply that rural life provides a relative sense of insulation from the systemic racism of the European-run cities.