The Trial scene of Lionel Burger in Nadine Gordimer's "Burger's Daughter"

 

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. This particular scene arouses in the reader pity and fear, the classical responses to the fate of the doomed hero pushing at his own limits and risking his life in the name of a noble cause. It is one of Gordimer's concentrated single scenes - a symbolic-political scene - which has been noted by Taubmann as exemplary of the novelist's method: "Her work concentrates on a single subject, Africa; and is most powerful in single, exemplary scenes – anagnorisis scenes, revealing and destroying false assumptions.”



Lionel Burger is arrested for his deep involvement with the black struggle. At his trial, he upheld his Marxist beliefs and his role in the struggle against racism. He declares in the court: “A change of social control in compatibility with the change in methods of production - known in Marxist language as ‘revolution’ - in this I saw the answer to the racialism that was destroying it even more surely and systematically now. 1 could not turn away from that tragedy. 1 cannot now. 1 took up then the pursuit of the end to racialism and injustice that I have continued and shall continue as long as I live.”

Lionel Burger is sentenced to life imprisonment for his support of the black cause and his condemnation of apartheid. Unfortunately, he dies within three years of his prison tenure.

The elevated status of the trial scene is complicated by Gordimer's use of ironical qualification. Burger is presented, in general, by a voice of apparently objective observation as an extraordinarily compassionate man, a Marxist and, in symbolic fashion, a Christian. He professes "the compassion of the Son of Man", a compassion he feels for both whites and blacks. Burger's "Christ-like compassion" is also suggested in the way he deals at his trial with the old schoolteacher who betrays him. Although registering that he has been betrayed, "he wasn't disgusted". Gordimer permits Burger's character to understand the frailty of other human beings in a crisis-ridden society.

Nevertheless, Burger remains firm when it comes to the problem of overcoming racism. As 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.”

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