Character/portrayal/role of Lionel Burger in Nadine Gordimer's "Burger's Daughter"

 

Nadine Gordimer, through the character of Lionel Burger, presents the life of a white liberal. He is the father of Rosa Burger, the protagonist of the novel. He is a man of deep conviction, a man of principles, a man of courage and honour. Lionel comes from a wealthy Afrikaner family. He studied medicine at Cape Town and Edinburgh. His second wife, Cathy Jansen is also actively involved in politics and on several occasions has been to jail. They keep open house and there is a constant stream of visitors. They have a son, Tony and a daughter, Rosa and a black boy Baasie who lives with them.

Lionel Burger is the romantic revolutionary figure who, in representing different phases of political engagement, becomes familiar within the national narrative. As a hero of underground politics, Lionel Burger captures the attention of various characters: Rosa, Conrad, Katya, Baasie, the Swedish journalist, Chabalier, whose observations and accounts range from admiration to scepticism. The heroic element is at its strongest when Burger, as anti-Apartheid fighter, is speaking for himself at his own trial. Lionel is sentenced to life imprisonment for his support of the black cause and his condemnation of apartheid. 



At his trial, Lionel upholds his Marxist beliefs and his role in the struggle against racism. He states in his testimony (his direct speech as his personal authority in the third-person narrative): “... this court has found me guilty on all counts. If I have ever been certain of anything in my life, it is that I acted according to my conscience on all counts. I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.” The spectators at the trial are hypnotised by Burger's self-possession. There are moments of electrified silence, followed by passionate outbursts from African supporters: "Amandhla! Awethu! Amandhla! Awethu!". A British observer, referring to his sentence of "life imprisonment" is heard to say: "And here life means life".

The spirit of enthusiasm and unreserved admiration for the hero continues after the trial, at Theo's place, where the scene is reminiscent of the apostles' gathering after Jesus' crucifixion: “There was bravado and sentiment in the confidence of the room full of people at Theo's, that they were behaving as Lionel Burger would expect, as he would do himself in their situation. That was how they saw themselves. Strong emotion - faith? - has different ways of being manifested among the different disciplines within which people order their behaviour.”

Lionel Burger is compared to Christ, and it becomes apparent that, if there is any meaning at all to a Christ-figure in South Africa, it is likely to be found in a character such as Lionel Burger. Here, Gordimer’s assessment of Lionel is as an ‘idealized’ character. Gordimer has keenly followed the revolutionary career of Bram Fischer on whom the character of Lionel Burger is based in the novel. Still, it is rather difficult to call this character ‘round’, because his own personality is not revealed fully. He remains a ‘flat’, in complete character.

Dedicated to his ideal of fighting racial injustice, Lionel Burger dies in prison as a martyr. According to Boyers, "Lionel Burger is at once an activist and a patriarch, a sower of the seeds of disorder and a stable centre around which numbers of people gather to discover where they are to go". It is against such a condition, of course, that his daughter must rebel.



Contrast in the character is the favourite technique used by Nadine Gordimer. In this novel Lionel’s character provides the best contrast to the protagonist, Rosa Burger. In Lionel Burger, Gordimer has created a figure who embodies not only the political praxis of the Communist community, but also the organic healing humanism of medicine. The political struggle in South Africa is translated in to a model of disease. Lionel Burger, as a white Afrikaner communist, a member of the generation of the ruling race that constructed apartheid, attempts to cure the disease his people have caused. By the time he dies, the struggle has gone beyond the efforts of whites to ‘cure’ the situation. Rosa, daughter of apartheid is positioned on the margins of the struggle. Whereas Lionel was a leader and a healer, Rosa provides services, rehabilitating the wounded rather than curing the disease. Literally, Rosa ends up in solitary confinement, but she is solitary in a different way as well. In contrast to Lionel, whose role as a white leader had been pre-eminent, after the events of 1976 Rosa’s can at best be secondary, supportive.

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