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The Second Sense Characters

In 'The Second Sense' by Nadine Gordimer, the nameless elderly white woman symbolizes the old South African elite, living in isolation and fear of a changing world. Her encounter with a young black man serves as a catalyst for her anxieties, representing the inevitable social change and the fragility of her privileged existence. The narrative explores themes of isolation, fear, and the psychological impact of societal shifts on personal identity.

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Nicoleta Stefanache
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39 views9 pages

The Second Sense Characters

In 'The Second Sense' by Nadine Gordimer, the nameless elderly white woman symbolizes the old South African elite, living in isolation and fear of a changing world. Her encounter with a young black man serves as a catalyst for her anxieties, representing the inevitable social change and the fragility of her privileged existence. The narrative explores themes of isolation, fear, and the psychological impact of societal shifts on personal identity.

Uploaded by

Nicoleta Stefanache
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Second Sense

by Nadine Gordimer
CHARACTERS
Project made by
Stefanache Nicoleta
The Woman
Although she is nameless, this is not an accidental omission but a deliberate
choice: the character takes on a symbolic value, representing a social class and
mentality, rather than a clearly defined individual identity.
She is an elderly white woman who lives alone in a large, well-protected house
in a seemingly safe and isolated area of ​South Africa. She lives in a world of
routine, carefully chosen objects, carefully preserved memories, and constant
fear of danger outside the walls of her home. She has no close social
relationships, and her isolation is as much physical as it is emotional and
psychological.
The Woman
This woman lives with the illusion of control and security. She is obsessed with
order, caution and maintaining a balance in her life, but beneath this apparent
calm lies a deep anxiety. The fear is not only of criminality, but of the world
that is changing around her, of the fact that her privileged position is becoming
increasingly fragile.
„The second sense” she has, hence the title of the story, is not a form of
clairvoyance, but rather a hypersensitivity to threat, a latent and persistent
fear that makes her suspicious of any form of closeness. This intuition, which
may seem like a gift at first, turns out to be a curse: it keeps her captive in a
state of hypervigilance, isolating her even more.
The Woman
Symbolically, the woman embodies the old white South
African elite, a social class accustomed to privilege, which
begins to feel the discomfort of a world in transition. Her
house becomes a metaphor for a fragile fortress, an isolation
that can no longer guarantee protection against external
social realities.
The young black man
The young black man suddenly appears in the middle of a still and predictable
routine, functioning as a catalyst for fear and conflict. He is a young black
man, whose presence in the woman’s house is not clearly motivated – it could
be an attempted robbery, he could be seeking shelter, or he simply entered by
mistake.
The story is told from the woman’s perspective, and the lack of a voice of his
own reflects the lack of real understanding between the two worlds they
represent.
The young black man
The young man speaks almost nothing, is not aggressive, and does not display
any overtly violent behavior. He is quiet, calm, and yet he causes the woman a
huge panic. He is not so much a real threat as a projection of all her fears, a
symbol of the unknown, intruding into the safe space of an isolated and
privileged life.
Physically, he is young, and this makes him a stark contrast to the woman’s
age. He is probably poor, perhaps homeless—a representative of the
oppressed, of a part of society that the woman avoids but which becomes
impossible to ignore.
The young black man
Symbolically, the young man is the image of the inevitable:
the coming social change, the growing presence of the
marginalized, the reclaiming of a place in spaces that were
once inaccessible. He is not presented as an enemy in a
classical sense, but rather as a sign that the world in which
the woman lives is no longer sustainable in its old form.
Secondary characters (invoked or suggested)

Former servants or employees


The woman makes vague allusions to the fact that she used to have
housekeepers – people who helped her, with whom she was accustomed.
Nowadays, these servants are no longer present. This disappearance
symbolizes the shift in the balance of power in society, but also the inevitable
degradation of old structures.
The woman is left alone not only physically, but also symbolically: the system
that protected her and gave her social status no longer works as before.
Neighbors – a significant absence
Although she lives in an isolated area, the lack of mention of neighbors or any form of
community is relevant. The woman has no friends or close support. This silence around her
adds a layer of psychological tension.
In a world where human closeness is replaced by suspicion and distance, the neighbor
becomes a stranger, and the community a memory.

The Past – an Invisible Character


Although not clearly expressed, the woman's past functions as a ghostly character:
everything she was or had, all the relationships and certainties of the past, become
constant landmarks in her mind. Perhaps she had a husband, a family, a circle of friends.
This past haunts her, because in the present everything seems emptied of meaning. The
contrast between the past and the present creates a feeling of loss, but also of non-
adaptation to reality.

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