Читать книгу Synapse - Antjie Krog - Страница 21

Cynthia

Ngewu:

this thing

they call re-

conciliation

. . . if I am under-

standing it correctly

. . . if it means this

perpetrator this man

who has killed Christopher

Piet if it means

he becomes human

again, this man,

so that I, so that

all of us can

get back our

humanity

. . . then

I agree

then I

support

it.

exposition: Mr Barnard lost his humaneness he

could kill because he was no longer human

to forgive him would make it possible for him

to change completely and regain his humanity

to have lost her son has naturally

also affected Mrs Ngewu’s own humanity

if the killer inspired by forgiveness begins

to change in order to regain his shared humanity

it would open up for all of us the possibility

of reaching out towards our own full humanity

in other words I forgive you so that you can

change here become whole here

so my own interwovenness-towards-interdependence can be restored

and I can live out my fullest humanity here on earth

counter-exposition: Mr Barnard does not understand forgiveness in this way

he believes in the individual and that only Jesus can forgive him

through a forgiveness that will resurrect him in the afterlife

amnesty is a purely legal process because killing was following orders

with the same bewilderment that he received the unasked-for forgiveness

he now receives the rage and resentment of people who see

that he has not changed that he will never change

because he does not feel connected to them and they realise suddenly

that it was futile to try to weave interconnectedness into

the concrete bunker that lives inside Mr Barnard’s whiteness