Genre
Autobiography
Setting and Context
The action takes place in South Africa from the beginning of the 1900s till the end of 1950.
Narrator and Point of View
The actions are told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.
Tone and Mood
The tone and mood in the autobiography is a violent one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Mathabane and the antagonist is the unjust system in which the main character lives.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is between the desire to become someone successful and the inability to do it because of the tense situation in which the main character lives in his home country.
Climax
The story reaches its climax when the main character is granted a scholarship and leaves for the United States.
Foreshadowing
Towards the middle of the autobiography, Mathabane is allowed to play tennis at the insistence of Wilfred Horn, a wealthy white man. This foreshadows the later instances in which Mathabane will be helped by the same man to go to America on a tennis scholarship.
Understatement
At the beginning of the story, Mathabane claims he had an easy life growing up. This is later proven to be an understatement when it is described the conditions in which the main character grew up in.
Allusions
One of the main allusions is the idea that for white people is comes as natural to see themselves as superior and as such to treat those who are different with disdain and superiority.
Imagery
No important imagery can be found.
Paradox
One of the main paradoxical ideas is the way in which the black people were still oppressed by the white people even though the black people were a majority in their own country.
Parallelism
A parallelism is drawn between Mathabane and the white children born into a wealthy family where Mathabane's mother works. This parallelism is used here to show just how unjust the system was and how much Mathabane had to suffer because of his skin color.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Education is used as a general term to make reference to opportunity and wealth.
Personification
We have a personification in the line "the entire court was a single beating heart, waiting for something to happen".
