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Welcome To Our Hillbrow Analysis

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This essay will discuss the elements of fiction found in the novel “Welcome to our Hillbrow” by Pheswane Mpe. Through the author’s intelligent honesty in exploring thematic apprehensions relevant to post-apartheid South African society, one may suggest that the main theme of the novel is the reflection of old and new sets of problems facing South Africa. The essay will specifically discuss how characterisation and narration contribute to other small themes like crime, Aids, xenophobia and suicide that make up to the main theme of post-apartheid issues that the new and democratic South Africa is currently facing and it will also explain what is meant by the term microcosm. The essay is aimed at making a link between the elements of fiction found in the novel and the theme and also explaining the …show more content…

The author takes the topic of Xenophobia to be a human condition that arises out of a lack of proper meaning interaction among people. For example in Oxford University people from other African countries, except South Africa were referred as to Mukwerekwere or Likwerekwere, Afrikans etc. To show that even people from other places were experiencing Xenophobia Refentse mother, while at Tiragalong, she believed that all Johannesburg women are evil and men destroyers even before she meet Lerato Refentse’s girlfriend (Mpe, 2001:29-63), which is leading to the element of fiction known as Dystopia were a person dislike a certain place because she/he imagined it as a bad place (Abrams and Harpham (2012:416-417). Xenophobia also falls under the biggest issue that the world especially South Africa suffers from, immigrants are facing discrimination and violence in the world, though much of that risk stopped from the institutionalised racism of the time due to apartheid. These immigrant were also accused of causing high crime rate in

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