Genre
Short stories
Setting and Context
"The Black Madonna" takes place in Zambesia.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narrators
Tone and Mood
Sympathetic, heart-breaking, astonishing, resignation, and judgemental.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Girls are protagonists in “The Adventurous girls.” White parents are antagonists in “The Old Chief Mshlanga.”
Major Conflict
Racism in “The Old Chief Mshlanga”
Murder in “Nuisance”
Climax
The miraculous blossoming of the flowers in "The Black Madonna”
Foreshadowing
Gideon foreshadows the fates of the children based on their races.
Understatement
The farmer understates the value of human beings when he categorizes them as things that ought to be shot by Jonas in “The Pig.”
Allusions
Historical allusions such as Stalin.
Allusions to racism (‘The Old chief Mshlanga’).
Imagery
Images of the aftermath of World War II in "The Eye of God in Paradise" depict deep-rooted trauma and suffering.
Paradox
The productivity of ‘barren soils’ in Zambesia is paradoxical.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“The Black Madonna” denotes a miracle similar to that of the Biblical Virgin Mary.
Personification
In “The Pig”, pigs are personified to represent human beings who are among trespassers.
The guinea fowl is personified in “Traitors.”
