Perspectives

Short stories like “The Waste Land” by Alan Paton are rarely self-standing; their interpretation and analyses often depend on what we know about the author and his style of writing, about the context they are set in and their connection to similar works. This is why it is always advisable to try and put literary texts into a larger perspective.…

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Works in the same genre

Alan Paton’s short story is a realistic piece of fiction, constructed using one of the characters’ perspective. Since the events depicted are violent and negative, we could also label the story as belonging to dirty realism, meaning that it deals with negative aspects of life and society.

In order to understand both realism and the narrative techniques used by the author, we recommend two similar stories, which have …

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Works with the same theme

To better understand the context and the theme of the short story, we recommend some other stories in which the setting is South-Africa and are related either to apartheid or racism.

One is “The Guilt” by Rayda Jacobs, which explores issues in South Africa…