The Old Chief Mshlanga | Analysis

This study guide is a great tool, if you are to analyse the short story "The Old Chief Mshlanga" by Doris Lessing. Here, we take an extensive look at the most important analytical element in the short story: structure, setting, characters, language, symbolism, narrator, etc. On top of that we also provide a summary and some help putting the text into perspective.

Presentation of the text

Title: “The Old Chief Mshlanga”
Author: Doris Lessing
Published in: African Stories (collection)
Date of Publication: 1964
Genre: Short Story

Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was a British author and Nobel Prize laureate (2007). She was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and lived there, as well as in London and South Africa.

“The Old Chief Mshlanga” is a coming of age short story which follows an English girl living in Africa who changes her perspective on African natives as she grows up and meets a local chief.

Excerpt

Here, you can read a short excerpt from the study guide:

Metaphors

The author of the short story resorts to extensive metaphorical language relating to the natural landscape. The “wind spoke a strange language” creates a personifying metaphor, as the wind is associated with a person and its sounds with a language. This serves to make the African landscape more vivid, suggesting its strangeness for the girl. You might also pay attention to other personifying metaphors like “the sad yellow light of sunset” or “a terror of isolation invaded me”.