Jump and Other Stories

The girl in “The Ultimate Safari” begins her story in a small village in Mozambique. She’s the first female main character in the collection and faces great hardship, but she perseveres. Within the first page, her mother disappears, and the girl and her two brothers are left to fend for themselves. She keeps a level head and tells her story matter-of-factly and without panic. She helps carry her baby brother across Kruger Park, demonstrating resilience. After they reach safety, the girl applies herself to learning and education, and she excels: “I am clever at school and she collected advertising paper people throw away outside the store and covered my schoolbooks with it” (45). No matter what, the girl rises to the challenges that come her way. With her first female character, Gordimer presents the reader with a Black girl who must fight to survive, and she proves herself to be capable and intelligent.

The girl’s story also helps Gordimer build on her themes and motifs. Her perspective provides a vivid picture of the horrors of war and the hardship that comes with being displaced from your home. Gordimer tells the girl’s story in first person, making her story immediate and immersive. Fences and animals appear in the story, two motifs seen throughout the rest of the collection. The White tourists at the safari park think fences will keep the world segregated and compartmentalized, but the girl and her family maneuver past those barriers, showing the resilience of the human spirit. During her time in the safari park, the girl watches the animals. She sees them survive. They fit into a natural balance, while her life is driven by chaos. Animals appear in other moments of Jump and Other Stories to spark similar moments of reflection in other characters. With the girl’s character, Gordimer chooses to showcase a strong Black female character and develops themes and motifs she can use again in other stories.

The primary antagonist of “Some Are Born to Sweet Delight,” Rad is a political radical willing to kill innocent people to achieve his objectives. He is tactful and patient. He lives with Vera’s family for an extended period and works at a restaurant while his plan takes shape. His persona fools Vera, who falls in love with him and becomes a cog in his violent scheme. Vera meets an unfortunate fate, but throughout their relationship she intuits there’s more to Rad than he lets on: “He was not to be drawn; he was never to be drawn” (77). Rad is clever, but his inauthenticity can’t be completely hidden. His dialogue is sparse, and his words foreshadow the story’s ending. As Vera prepares for her trip to his home country, Rad stares at her intensely: “He was gazing at her intensely, wandering over the sight of her.—Because I’ve chosen you.—” (82). Vera thinks Rad has chosen her to love. Really, he's chosen her to be sacrificed for his cause. While he hides in plain sight, Gordimer uses his character to leave hints for the reader and to add tension to the story. Through his tact and patience, Rad shows how hate can drive a person.

Although Rad is the villain of his story, Gordimer develops his motivation to explain how he became the person he is. Rad keeps his past a mystery to Vera, speaking vaguely of his past and his home country. When he does speak of his home, he portrays it as a place of inequality: “—Yes, nightclubs, rich people’s palaces to show tourists, but there are also factories and prison camps and poor people living on a handful of beans a day.—” (76). Rad doesn’t explain his position within that world, but it’s nevertheless the place that turned him into a radical. The deadly conclusion of his actions creates a cautionary message about how exploitative economic systems can breed resentment and create violent resistance. He’s villainous, but Gordimer explains how the world makes villains like him.

The Teraloynas begin as a small island community. Over time, they spread out across the world and are assimilated by different races and cultures. They forget their traditional ways of life, and their history is forgotten by all:

The Teraloynas are an obscure curiosity in the footnotes of ethnologists. The surname survives here and there; the people who bear it are commonly thought, without any evidence but a vague matching of vowel sounds, to be of Spanish or Portuguese origin (103).

At the conclusion of their story, Teraloyna of different skin colors fight one another. Additionally, a Teraloyna soldier is sent back to his ancestral home, but he wasn’t raised to appreciate his family history. As he approaches the island, his only objective is to kill the cats that have swarmed the island: “this time grey, striped, ginger, piebald, tabby, black, white—all colours, abundant targets, doesn’t matter which, kill, kill them all” (107). He’s not interested in preservation, only termination, because he’s been cut off from the past. The Teraloynas’ story develops Gordimer’s theme of history’s fragility.

The story also encourages the reader to consider the impact humans have on the environment. Initially, the Teraloynas enjoy a tranquil life on their tiny island. They’re isolated, and the balance of their ecosystem is fragile. After sailors arrive, goats overtake the island and force the Teraloynas to abandon their home. Later, when meteorologists arrive, their cats overtake the island. When they’re questioned, the meteorologists confess their ignorance: “It was simply out of mind; out of the mainland” (105). Using the Teraloyna, Gordimer asks the reader to consider the impact our actions have on even the smallest of places. The balance of the natural world can be easily thrown into disrepair, impacting animals and humans alike.

Harry is a White political activist with an extensive criminal record. He returns to South Africa legally but still fears persecution. His anxiety emphasizes the deep-seated political hostility in the region. Progress has been made, but he remains alert. Middle-aged, and a seasoned veteran of protesting and rebelling, Harry is comfortable taking on new personas to evade detection:

He’s a little too forty-five-ish, thickened around the jowl and diaphragm, to pass as a student but with his cravat of tangled black hair showing in the neck of a sweat shirt and his observance of the uniform jogging shoes with soles cushioned like tyres, he could be anyone among the passengers— (184).

His willingness to lie and adopt aliases shows how political motivations can change and mold a person. When he meets Sylvie, Harry enjoys creating another persona:

So he was free to transform his experience of guerrilla training camps in Tanzania and Libya, his presence in the offices of an exiled High Command in cities deadened by northern snows or tropical heat, to provide exotic backdrops for his skyscrapers (191).

Unlike counterrevolutionaries and radicals of previous stories, who weave political motivations with hate and violence, Harry uses craftiness and wit to evade detection, leading him to being invited into Sylvie’s home.

Because Harry is White, Sylvie is comfortable inviting him over. Harry uses his privilege as a White man to prod Sylvie about her opinions. She reluctantly takes the bus, clearly out of place. Harry uses the opportunity to ask why she doesn’t like the city:

—Every day, no. But what’s wrong with the city?—Too full of blacks for you, now, lady, blacks selling fruit and cheap jewellery and knitted caps, dirtying the streets, too full of men without work for whom you see your bracelets and that swish Italian suede bag as something to be taken from you (187).

Harry forces Sylvie to confront a world she hides herself from, and it’s an uncomfortable experience for her. Harry recognizes the advantages he has in life because he’s a White man, and he uses that position to engage others critically. His perspective creates a contrast to how Black activists are treated in the collection. Sylvie wouldn’t trust a Black man the same way she trusts Harry. He uses that trust to be a political ally for the working class by asking Sylvie to visualize the inequality surrounding them.