Literary Analysis Of The Lemon Orchard
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The Lemon Orchard is an allegory of apartheid condensed down into a short story, where a coloured man is captured by four white men, who force him to journey through an orchard where they abuse and kill him
La Guma has created character within this passage through indirect characterization and setting through descriptive language and by presenting details about the time and place.
Structurally, The Lemon Orchard is divided into thirteen paragraphs that correspond to particular stages of the plot. The first and second paragraphs introduce the characters and establish the setting with long sentences; this is followed by the disjunction in the third paragraph. The tension is at its height in paragraphs eight where the dramatic conflict occurs to the rising action in paragraphs eleven and twelve, and then closes with a suspenseful ending.
In the exposition the setting is introduced by the author describing the weather and natural surroundings. He uses the semantic field such as “chill”, “cold” and “damp” to create the dismal wintry setting of the story and as a result he sets the mood of the story before one reads it. Through descriptive language La Guma refers to the exact time of the story. “The night” is a setting for crisis and the first image he presents is the moon that watches over the action of his lemon orchard but actively participates in the crime by being a spectator. The moon symbolizes society who overlooked injustice during apartheid as it hides behind the