The Men Walk Through An Orchard Of Lemons Analysis

La Guma uses third-person narration, a progressive plot structure and powerful language devices to craft together five symbolic characters who journey through a lemon orchard, a microcosm of South Africa during the 1960s, on a cold night.

Structurally, La Guma has arranged his story into paragraphs that correspond to particular stages within a progressive plot. He begins it first by introducing the characters and establishing the setting, and then he creates a conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, this initiates the rising action, as one tries to out maneuver the other, and then closes in suspense. The plot itself progresses like a journey “The men were walking through an orchard of lemons…” although the overall purpose of it is

Its images play a fundamental role in creating the atmosphere of the story. Night is a setting for crisis and it is not surprising that the first image we encounter is that of the moon, which is associated with hunting and madness. The moon mimics human nature, as it hides behind clouds which are compared to “suspended streamers of dirty cotton wool in the sky” as if afraid to witness what is about to transpire. The use of contrast shows how a cloud which should be white and pure is soiled by racism. La Guma chooses the word ‘dirty’ for its ambiguity as it can mean both unclean and immoral. The alliterating words impress the image of the dirty clouds upon our minds and the repetition of the sibilant “s” suggests a snake-like quality, implying slyness and

The expressions are colloquial “Is it not so” and the sentences are short in order to build suspense, as they are layered one after the other. The author uses tags; “the leader said” to help us keep up with the action, who is speaking and the manner in which the words are delivered as in the man “spoke with forced casualness”. He uses dialogue to highlight the vernacular. The Dutch slang the white men use like “kaffir”, and “hotnot”, reveals their race which is never explicitly mentioned. The undertones of their words express hate. Further, the dialect reinforces the theme of the story, this is clearly a story about racism. Dialect also reveals class. The white men who are shown to be superior to the colored man are actually members of the rural class hence their crude language. They describe him with an oxymoron “educated bushman” which does them an injustice by revealing their hypocritical natures.

The author shows how each of the characters reacts to one another when the minor character complains about the cold “It’s cold” and his grievance which is seen as a weakness, is met with “sarcasm” exposing the leader’s coldness. Satirically, the man “not warmly dressed” does not whine about the cold. The reader comes to notice that strength and weakness are a recurring motif within the