Tsotsi Chapter 12 Book Summary
- Survival: survival is developed in the story because tsotsi is a young boy living alone and being a thug. He learns to take care of himself which is most likely why he does not value other people’s lives. He lives to protect himself and only care about himself. Once he gets the baby his means of survival change.
- CHAPTER 12 – Tsotsi’s relationship with Miriam starts aggressively but over the course of the book he comes to appreciate her. Although he never says thank you to Miriam, in what way does their relationship change to let us know she is appreciated. – Identify what Miriam indirectly teaches Tsotsi about life?
Content
1. Introduction
2. Athol Fugard as a writer and the historical context
Literature Study Guides make nationally prescribed novels and dramas accessible to learners to help them prepare for exams. They provide insight into the author and context of the writing, analysis of critical themes, plots and characters and plenty of exercises for exam preparation.
3. Tsotsi as a novel and Tsotsi as a film - a direct comparison
3.a. General differences
3.a.1. Narrators in novels and pictures in films
3.a.2. The atmosphere
3.a.3. The setting
3.a.4. The language
3.b. The differences in the plots of the two versions
3.b.1. Tsotsi’s gang and the murder of Gumboot Dhlamini (Chapter 1)
3.b.2. Tsotsi’s fight with Boston (Chapter 2)
3.b.3. Tsotsi’s encounter with the baby (Chapter 3)
3.b.4. Tsotsi hides the baby in the ruins (Chapter 4)
3.b.5. The funeral of Gumboot Dhlamini, Boston’s recovery and Tsotsi’s reunification with Butcher and Die Aap (Chapter 5)
3.b.6. Tsotsi’s encounter with Morris Tshabalala (Chapters 6 and 7)
3.b.7. Tsotsi finds a replacement mother in Miriam Ngidi (Chapter 8)
3.b.8. Tsotsi’s childhood (Chapter 9)
3.b.9. Tsotsi’s second encounter with Miriam Ngidi (Chapter 10)
3.b.10. The story of Boston’s life (Chapter 11)
3.b.11. Tsotsi’s death (Chapter 12)
Tsotsi Chapter 12 Book Summary Graphic Organizer
4. Interpretations of the major differences
4.a. The replacement of the apartheid topic
4.b. The different atmospheres in the two works
4.c. The missing narrator and its effect on the plausibility and numerous details
4.d. Apparent commercial reasons for changes in the plot
5. Summary
6. Works cited
1. Introduction
Tsotsi is the first and up-to-present only novel by the South African playwright Athol Fugard (*1932). The novel deals with a young, acrimonious criminal whose life starts to change when he becomes responsible for a baby. Influenced by the author’s visit to Sophiatown near Johannesburg, Tsotsi was written between 1958 and 1962, but then Fugard put the manuscript away and did not think it was “worth publishing and did not show or submit it to anyone” (Kaplan in Fugard 2009:239). Later he “could not even remember having written it” (Pogrund in Gray 1982:37). About twenty years later, in 1978, a researcher named Stephen Gray edited the novel for publication and cut about 20 percent from the original manuscript. In 1979, Fugard read the novel for the first time in 20 years and approved its publication. More than another two decades later, in 2004 and 2005, Tsotsi was made into a film, directed by Gavin Hood, which won the Academy Award for the best foreign film in 2006. Unlike the novel’s plot, the plot of the film is not set in the 1950s to 60s but in the post-apartheid South Africa around the beginning of the new millennium. Not just because more than 40 years passed from the original idea until its publication as a film, the original novel and the film version are quite different in many aspects. Although both the novel and the film follow roughly the same structure, the differences offer many enlightening insights. This paper is going to compare the film version with the original version in the novel in order to analyze and interpret the differences. Some of the major differences revolve around the role of racism, apartheid, politics and social criticism in the two versions, and still others around the different impacts of the two works and the different reasons, purposes and circumstances under which the novel was written and why the film was made.
2. Athol Fugard as a writer and the historical context
Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard was born in 1932 near the South African village of Middelburg as a child of a white father of English descent and an Afrikaner mother (Afrikaner is a term for a white ethnic group in Africa, mainly descended from northwestern European settlers). Fugard’s parents owned a tearoom in the town of Port Elizabeth, which was frequently visited by black workers (Kaplan in Fugard 2009). Since 1913, seventy-seven per cent of the South African area was reserved for white people, while the black population, which today as much as then formed the vast majority of the country’s population, predominantly moved to urban labour dormitories around the cities. In 1948, the Afrikaner Nationalist Party with its leader Daniel François Malan won the election and the apartheid laws (apartheid means separateness in Afrikaans), which aggravated the living conditions of black people even more, were established. Black people required passes, for example in order to go to work in the cities inhabited by white people. Furthermore, forced removals of black people from their homes and the creation of areas designated for black people only (so-called black townships) increased. The townships suffered from harsh problems like unemployment, poverty, diseases and crime, while the white authorities hardly did anything to improve the situation. Some very ruthless criminals, so-called tsotsis (the term tsotsi might have derived from the Africanisation of the term zoot-suit, a way of dressing in 1940 American gangster films) (Kaplan in Fugard 2009:i), who in many cases robbed, murdered and raped, soon became notorious for their pitiless and extremely violent crimes.
In 1958, at the time when the twenty-six-year-old Fugard started to write Tsotsi, he had just moved from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg, where he worked as a clerk dealing with violations of passports. More than most white people in South Africa, Fugard soon became very critical of the apartheid system and its brutality, which he became more and more aware of during his stay in Johannesburg. The plot of his novel Tsotsi is set in Sophiatown, a suburb of Johannesburg, where “black and white could drink and dance together” (Kaplan in Fugard 2009:v) until it was demolished, renamed into Triomf and turned into a suburb for white people only. At the time when Tsotsi was written, Fugard travelled repeatedly between Europe and South Africa. Roughly at the same time, Fugard wrote The Blood Knot, his first play that was publicly performed and deals with similar issues as Tsotsi does.
3. Tsotsi as a novel and Tsotsi as a film - a direct comparison
Although the novel and the film follow roughly the same structure, there are also many differences. The following subsections of this chapter are going to compare the novel and the film directly and analyze the differences. In the first part of this chapter some general differences will be pointed out, then, in the second part, the two plots will be compared.
3.a. General differences
3.a.1. Narrators in novels and pictures in films
When a novel is compared to an adaptation on film, the novel’s narrator is always either completely left out or considerably reduced in the film version. Narrators in films usually only exist as voice-overs or short, written remarks in some rare scenes. Of course, the narrator is usually not very necessary in a film because, as a famous adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. For example, when the narrator in the novel describes what a place or a character looks like, the viewer of a film can see that directly. However, the narrator in a novel can provide the reader with important background information, for example about the exact feelings or the thoughts of a character, which a film cannot do so easily. In a film version the viewer has to interpret the acting and the dialogues in order to understand the feelings and thoughts. Although a viewer of a film version does not need as much imagination as a reader of a novel (and the picture in the heads of different readers might also differ), he is less well-informed, for example about the exact reasons why a character acts in a certain way. This is especially true for omniscient third-person-narrators like in the case of Tsotsi. For this reason the plot and the dialogues must sometimes be changed in the adaptation process in order to make the actions of characters appear plausible.
3.a.2. The atmosphere
When a novel is adapted into a film, the writer of the screenplay and the director have many possibilities to change the atmosphere. For example they can add happy or sad music, they can add beautiful or unsightly shots of the scenery or they can use different camera angles and effects. Thus in the case of Tsotsi the atmosphere created by the director is quite positive. Gavin Hood answered an interview question about this topic in the following way:
The typical gangster-ghetto style film is portrayed with lots of handheld cameras, but I wanted to use my own style instead.(…). People were worried that it would be too slow but I wanted to reflect the inner conscious of the characters and depict their inner world. (…). I wanted my shots to be intimate and long. Using widescreen, the characters appear tiny against the big city and township backdrops. I just wanted to create my own visual sensibility. (Cowley)
3.a.3. The setting
Another general difference dealing with the adaptation of novels into films is that the plot can be moved to a different place time or even a different time. The effect of it is that the plot itself becomes renewed and isn’t just a rumination. The novel and the film versions of Tsotsi are set in different times. When Gavin Hood, director and editor of the screenplay, was asked why he moved the setting to a time 40 or 50 years later, he answered:
First of all I just thought that the great thing about Tsotsi is it's a very kind of universal story, not only could you set it in the contemporary world, but in fact you could have set it in almost any city in the world and just given it back it's flavour. (Cowley) Of course this raises the question if some plots don’t lose some of their most important messages when they are set to different times. In the case of Tsotsi this question will be dealt with in chapter 4.a.
3.a.4. The language
In the case of Tsotsi, the language was changed in the adaptation. The novel was written in English but the characters in the film speak Tsotsitaal, which is a Creole of Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans. If the original novel had been written in Tsotsitaal, most people wouldn’t have been able to read it. In the film version however it was possible to use the original language, because it could be made understandable for everybody else with the help of subtitles. A book can’t be subtitled, but the film version made it possible.
Tsotsi Chapter 12 Book Summary Where The Crawdads Sing
3.b. The differences in the plots of the two versions
3.b.1. Tsotsi’s gang and the murder of Gumboot Dhlamini (Chapter 1)
The novel begins with Tsotsi and the other three member of his gang sitting together on a Friday night and drinking beer. The characters are introduced. The reader meets Tsotsi, who is “the youngest of the four, the one who had said the least” (1), Boston, who “always had a story” (1), Die Aap, who has got his name “because of his long arms” (2) and Butcher whose “stories were told in ten words or less” (2) and who laughed with”a cold sound, sharp as a knife blade” (4). The four young men decide to “take one on the trains” (4). The victim’s name is Gumboot Dhlamini. The reader learns that Dhlamini left his loving wife on the countryside for one year in order to earn money in Johannesburg’s mining belt. It is the last week of that one year when he encounters Tsotsi’s gang. Tsotsi chooses him for three reasons: he is smiling, he wears a tie and he pays his money with cash from his pay packet. Unnoticed by the other passengers, the four tsotsis surround Dhlamini in the crowded train and without any further ado, Butcher murders him by stinging a bicycle spoke into Dhlamini’s heart. “Even as that was happening, Tsotsi bent close to the dying man and in his ear whispered an obscene reference to his mother” (12). Only when the crowd has left the train, the few remaining passengers find the dead body of Dhlamini.
The film begins with Tsotsi, Aap (in the film version the “Die” in his name is left out), Boston and Butcher playing with dice, but apart from such minor changes the first chapter of the novel does not differ much from its adaption on film. The novel’s first chapter as well as the film are simply used in order to introduce the reader/viewer to some of the main characters. Especially in the film version the deeper situation, which the characters are in, doesn’t surface yet at all. It doesn’t make too much of a difference if the robbery and murder is committed in the 1960s or at the beginning of the 21st century. Hence, the two versions start very similarly. Nevertheless, the novel of course has got much more possibilities to go into detail. For example the reader learns the name and the pitiable background of the victim, while he remains just a nameless, more or less anonymous character in the film version. This makes the murder appear even crueller in the original version. In the film version, Dhlamini is only murdered after he tried to verbally defend himself. Tsotsi’s whispered final insult is left out in the film version as well. The film version does not show the characters backgrounds and Tsotsi’s cruelty, hate and bitterness as much as the original version does.
3.b.2. Tsotsi’s fight with Boston (Chapter 2)
The novel’s second chapter is set at Soekie’s place, where the four young men are drinking and smoking marihuana after the “job on the trains”. Soekie is a coloured woman in her fifties. Tsotsi feels at unease because his gang-member Boston feels sick about their crime. Tsotsi avoids talking about his age or his real name and would rather kill than tell anybody the truth about himself (17). Tsotsi “allowed himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays, and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living moment” (21), but Boston keeps asking questions and tries to teach Tsotsi the meaning of the word “decency”
(25). Butcher and Die Aap take a woman from the bar outside with them. Boston asks Tsotsi if he feels nothing but Tsotsi does not want to understand the question. Boston takes out a knife and cuts his arm in order to show Tsotsi how he feels about the murder earlier that night, which makes Tsotsi hate Boston even more than before. After Boston says that even Tsotsi must have a soul, Tsotsi lunges at him and beats him up brutally until Soekie, Butcher and Die Aap enter the room and keep Tsotsi back. Then Tsotsi walks out into the night.
Up to that point the plot of the film adheres quite closely to the original version. The dialogue is only slightly different, Soekie’s bar is crowded with dancing people in the film version, the four young men don’t smoke and Butcher and Aap don’t leave the room in company of a girl. In the film version Tsotsi rather runs out of the room instead of walking. Apart from these minor differences that, above all, have effects on the atmosphere, the second chapter is adapted quite identically and hence doesn’t offer many possibilities for further interpretation.
[...]
Chapter 1
The gang is sitting around a table. Tsotsi is the leader of the group. Boston is telling stories and talking nonstop. Die Aap and Butcher listen to Boston as they drink their beers. Tsotsi folds his hands together and everyone stops what they are doing. Tsotsi tells the gang that they will take one on the train. They walk through the town and are avoided by everyone. The boys victim is Gumboot Dhlamini. He is a hardworking, larger man. Almost a year has passed since Gumboot has left his pregnant wife for work, and he is excited to return home to write her a letter which will inform her that he will be returning home in a week. The man makes three mistakes: he smiles at Tsotsi, he is wearing a bright red tie which makes him easy to follow and he exposes his pay packet to everyone. On the train Die Aap grabs Gumboots arms. Butcher works a bicycle spoke up his heart before he even realizes that he cannot move his arms. Boston grabs Gumboots pay packet and they exit the train before anyone notices what has happened.
Chapter 2
We find the gang drinking, laughing and enjoying themselves at a girl named Soekie’s house. Butcher is drinking at a much faster rate than anyone else. In the corner of the room, a friend of Soekie named Rosie is sitting passed out. Butcher and Die Aap are attracted to her and begin to mess around with her. Tsotsi has no problem with what the other boys are doing, but Boston finds their lack of decency sickening. Boston and Die Aap eventually take Rosie outside and rape her.
Chapter 4
Tsotsi’s first problem is to find milk for the baby. He goes to Cassim’s shop where we learn that Tsotsi can not read, this leads to him being fooled into thinking condensed milk is breast milk for the child. After going back to his room and cleaning and feeding the baby he decides to go hide the child in an abandoned building. That night Tsotsi has a flashback of the “yellow bitch”.
Chapter 5
The novel slows down in chapter five as Gumbot is buried and Tsotsi, Butcher and Die Aap sit around in Tsotsi’s room waiting to see if Boston will show. After coming to the conclusion that Boston is not coming Tsotsi decides they will go to the city.
Chapter 6
As Tsotsi and the gang make it to the city they go out to find their next target. Tsotsi soon loses them in the crowd of people at terminal place, although as he is lost he finds his next target; Morris Tshabalala. Morris continues on with his day but soon notices he is being followed by Tsotsi. The chapter ends with Morris looking back only to see Tsotsi vanish into the shadows.
Chapter 7
Stepping on Morris-the cripples- hand he draws back memories of his childhood. Remembering a yellow bitch, a dog, crawling towards him just as Morris crawls now. The similarities are striking calling back the memory with great pain. This intrigues Tsotsi and he continues to follow the man through the crowded area observing without being observed. Tsotsi follows the cripple out f Terminal Place and into the twilight. He is both frightened and intrigued by what lies before him, wishing to again have his memory jolted but knowing it is against everything he has stood for. As Tsotsi continues to follow the beggar he notice many details: the speed with which the cripple tries to get away, his grunts of effort as he pushes onwards with his arms, even the fear in the way he moves. This all means nothing to the old Tsotsi but something in him has changed. He feels for the man, feels sympathy. He continues to follow Morris as he makes his way from street to street stopping only when tired or briefly to eat at the Bantu Eating House. Finally the two are alone and Tsotsi realizes it is time to do the only thing he knows-kill. He must kill the beggar. He approaches and caught in the light cast from the lamp overhead the beggar faces his follower. Tsotsi talks to the man about his life, how he lost his legs, why he wishes to live and for the first time realizes killing is a choice. This time he chooses to let the beggar live.
Chapter 9
A flashback to his childhood, his mom and grandma chatting, the news his father will finally return home and then the pain he recalls the night his mother was taken from him-the last night before the return of his father. The suddenness with which it happens is the most shocking to David and when his grandmother learns of her disappearance she sets off to find her. Young David is left to fend for himself. His father returns but David cannot bear the burden and hides as to not be seen. The father returns to the empty house and is angry kicking and breaking the dogs back. Now David is truly alone but is picked up by 7 others in a similar situation. Petah is the leader of the gang. They take him in, feed him, and allow him to sleep in the pipes by the river ith them. As he learns to fend for himself he leaves the pain of the past behind even ridding himself of his forer name, deeming himself Tsotsi-gangster. He begins to develop a set of rules that take him down his future path.
Tsotsi Chapter 12 Book Summary
Chapter 8
Church bells toll. Tsotsi returns to the ruins to check on the baby only to see that the condensed milk has attracted ants. He fears for the baby and rids it of the ants, cleaning the baby and realizing condensed milk is no longer an option. He returns to his room with a plan in mind. He shall wait. Just out the window of Tsotsis home lays what is known as Water Works Square. The only area in the area with readily available drinking water. The citizen’s line up for miles waiting to collect their water. He waits until s3eeing a young woman with a baby. She will have milk, although he doesn’t know it her name is Miriam. He waits until she leaves following her home and waiting until she is comfortably inside before knocking and before she can comprehend what is about to happen he has snuck inside. He demands she feed the baby, she begins to unbutton her shirt and the feeding begins…
Chapter 10
The book starts off at Tsotsi’s house when Die Aap comes over. Tsotsi has to hide the baby under his bed. The gang ends and tsotsi explains that to die aap. Then after Miriam comes to tsotsi’s room and helps take care of David, because he needs mother’s milk. After she left, tsotsi took David to the ruins and hid him there.
Chapter 11
Tsotsi goes back to where he left Boston after he beat him up, and takes him back to his room and takes care of him. Once Boston wakes up he talks to tsotsi then runs away. While they are talking tsotsi explains how the gang is over.
Chapter 12
Isaiah was planting plants in the church garden, trying to keep the rows straight. Then talked to father ramsy, and he told Isaiah he could ring the church bell tonight 10 mins before seven o’clock. Isaiah the talked to tsotsi and told him about god. Tsotsi then takes David back to Miriam so she can feed him and then brings him back to the ruins. After he leaves
David at the ruins he hears the bulldozers coming and rushes back in attempt to save him. He is not quick enough though and gets crushed, along with David. A wall collapsed on them and when they cleared the rubble he had the biggest smile on his face that anyone has ever seen.