The Ultimate Safari

“The Ultimate Safari” is a postcolonial short story in the tradition of realism with facts delivered in little embellishment. Gordimer achieves this effect by using a child as the narrator. A child is both unreliable and chronically honest. The little girl can speak of murder and disappearances bluntly without offering cause and effect or context. The use of an innocent child as narrator highlights the impact of decisions made by white colonial-minded powerbrokers thousands of miles away in South Africa’s minority-ruled government.

Gordimer explores the universality of human suffering and, on the opposing side, the capacity for indifference to suffering. Though the story depicts a specific refugee family’s journey from their war-torn homeland to a refugee camp, the characters in the story are deliberately vague to encourage the reader to see themselves in the characters and generate Empathy for the Refugee Experience. The characters remain unnamed, described only in minimal detail, and utilize their relationships to one another as the foundational means of identification. They are not specific to the crisis in Mozambique but representative of what could become of anyone in a war zone.

The unnamed protagonist describes herself as “the middle one, the girl” (2). She offers no name, only her status in the family relative to other members. Her siblings are the “first-born brother” and “little brother” (2). These characters also remain unnamed. Her parents, grandparents, the guide, and the women at the camp are also unnamed. Likewise, nations are left unnamed until the final scene; her village is never named and neither is the location of the camp. The ambiguity leaves room for the applicability of the characters to refugees in any place. Gordimer aims for readers to realize and empathize with the consequences of South Africa’s destabilization policy. She condemns white indifference to suffering in Africa by provoking identification with the suffering.

To draw further attention to this capacity for indifference, Gordimer opens the short story with an actual safari advertisement published in 1988 in the Observer of London. Though war raged along the border of South Africa and Mozambique, the tourism industry was busy attracting wealthy Brits to Kruger Park. As the family journeys through Kruger Park to reach the refugee camp, starving and exposed to the elements, the girl says, “[w]e could see the fires where the white people were cooking in the camps and we could smell the smoke and the meat” (3). The sensory emphasis on the smell and sight of the food emphasizes the closeness of the tourists, yet none come to their aid. The tourists are either ignorant of the war or indifferent to it. Gordimer hence explores How Ignorance and Apathy Lead to Subjugation. The audacity of going on safari bordering a war zone is highlighted first in the advertisement and again in the portrayal of the tourists who answered the advertisement.

In the context of the safari, Gordimer explores a paradox: the animality of humans and the humanity of animals. In the opening lines the narrator describes the war. The bandits “ran all over the place and we ran away from them like chickens chased by dogs” (1). This is the first reference to humans with animal traits. Yet, in Kruger Park the animals they encounter are gentle and almost civilized in their encounters with the refugees. As the refugees huddle within sight of the tourists’ cook fires, they see “the hyenas with their backs that slope as if they’re ashamed, slipping through the bush after the smell. If one turned its head, you saw it had big brown shining eyes like your own” (6). Here the hyena is personified; the little girl sees the humanity of the creature. Likewise, when the family encounters a herd of elephant, they remain calm and leave the humans alone. The encounter is one of beauty rather than danger. Gordimer juxtaposes the violence of humans with the relative calm of the animal kingdom throughout “The Ultimate Safari” to suggest the depravity of humans who force suffering on others.

In the face of such suffering, Gordimer juxtaposes the characters who give up and characters who carry on. The story suggests that hope is what makes survivors out of some, while the lack of hope creates victims of others. The grandmother represents hope. She carries on, even when things appear hopeless for her and her family. She also carries on when they are saved to build an even better life, exemplifying The Overlooked Labor of Women in Wartime. In contrast, her husband does not. From the start, he is depicted as small and nonverbal. He has given up on himself, the situation, and the future. When he finally disappears, the story implies that it is because he was broken and hopeless. Gordimer’s juxtaposition of the grandparents runs parallel to the contrast between human suffering and the indifference of the tourists.

Gordimer uses symbolism throughout the story to represent such hope. The grandmother, who embodies the caregiver trope, sells her church shoes to buy supplies for their escape. Midway through Kruger Park, the little girl says, “[o]ur grandmother is strong, but her feet are bleeding” (5). The grandmother has sacrificed her feet for their survival. Once they arrive at camp, the grandmother finds back-breaking physical work. Though she is able to afford the necessities and beyond, she sacrifices again for the children: “Our grandmother hasn’t been able to buy herself a pair of shoes for church yet, but she has bought black school shoes and polish to clean them with for my first-born brother and me” (13). For the grandmother, shoes represent security and home; they are a safety that was lost in the war and regained again through hard work and perseverance. The girl continues, “When we three look at (the shoes) it’s as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away” (13). The shoes represent hope passed from the grandmother to the girl.