Empathy and Irony in “Keeping Fit” by Nadine Gordimer

Abstract

This essay proposes a close textual analysis of “Keeping Fit”, a story published in 1991 in Jump and Other Stories at a time when South Africa was in a post-apartheid but pre-democratic situation. “Keeping Fit” is arguably one of the most polarised and ironic short stories in the volume. I suggest that the story challenges the polarisations that it installs by bringing about an ironic and carnivalesque dissolution of boundaries while conjuring up a strong sense of the uncanny, which destabilizes its own partitions and differences. While the black protagonist is presented as empathetic and caring, the white couple is described as selfish and indifferent, yet the open ending ironically suggests the possibility of change and renewal.