What was karlie doing in one hot october day?
the bench story by richard rive
Answers
Explanation:
The Bench (1960)
Summary:
The Bench, by Richard Rive is a short story about a man called Karlie who is at some sort of demonstration against apartheid. The short story takes place in Johannesburg on a hot November day where Karlie is at a demonstration against apartheid. Karlie thinks that the words the speaker isspeaking are great words, and he is listening very carefully to them. The speaker says that
“we must challenge the right of any people who see fit to segregate human beings solely on grounds of pigmentation”
Karlie thinks that the fact that he should be a good as any other white man requiresmuch thinking and he wonders about what a man from his home town called Ou Klaas would say tothis, because he says that God made the white man and the black man separately.Later on in the story a white woman asks the crowd to challenge any discriminatory laws ontheir way. When the demonstration is over, Karlie goes to the station where mixed races arewalking around. Karlie thinks that people mistrusts each other with an unnatural fear, and that people are suspicious to each other – Karlie remembers what the speaker had said about challengingthese things, and when he sees a bench with “Europeans only” written on it he decides that this isgoing to be his challenge. Karlie sits down on the bench but nobody seems to notice. Suddenly,when Karlie is wrapped up in thinking of his home town, a man tells Karlie to get off the bench.Karlie does not get of the bench and even though the man keeps on shouting at him, he does not sayanything. Karlie thinks that he is gaining some sort of supremacy towards the white man becausethe white man is afraid of taking action himself and the white man calls a police man. The policeman is also telling Karlie to get up but he does not get up. He just maintains his silence. After a little while people start pulling him and hitting him but he continues fighting