The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer : In-Depth Critical Review and Analysis

Yaffa Phillips, CC BY-SA 2.0,
 via Wikimedia Commons
Nadine Gordimer

Introduction

Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974) is one of the defining works of South African literature. Awarded the Booker Prize, the novel is not only a masterclass in literary craft but also a profound commentary on apartheid-era South Africa. 

Through its layered narrative, complex characters, and symbolic landscapes, the book explores themes of land ownership, alienation, racial injustice, and the uneasy relationship between human beings and nature. 

Gordimer’s portrayal of her protagonist, Mehring, acts as a microcosm of white privilege during apartheid, while her precise, often ironic prose underscores the contradictions of a society built on inequality.

This essay will present a detailed plot summary, critically analyze Gordimer’s writing style, examine her technique in creating grounded characters, explore her use of satire and irony, delve into the emotional aspects of the main characters, discuss the social and environmental context of South Africa in shaping her work, and consider how she was influenced by her literary contemporaries.

1. Summary of the Story and Plot

Yaffa Phillips, CC BY-SA 2.0,
 via Wikimedia Commons
Nadine Gordimer

At the heart of The Conservationist is Mehring, a wealthy industrialist in his mid-forties. Divorced and emotionally adrift, he has purchased a 400-acre farm outside Johannesburg. He does not farm for a living—rather, he sees the property as a tax shelter, a weekend escape, and an occasional setting for casual sexual encounters. Mehring is not a conservationist in any meaningful ecological sense; instead, his “conservation” is a self-serving desire to maintain the status quo that benefits him.

Mehring’s life is marked by estrangement. His relationship with his son, Terry, is distant—Terry’s liberal political views and disdain for apartheid clash with Mehring’s complacent acceptance of the system. 

His former lover, Antonia, a politically engaged leftist, remains a haunting presence, a reminder of intimacy and authenticity he cannot reclaim.

The turning point in the story occurs when Mehring’s black foreman, Jacobus, discovers the body of an unidentified black man on the farm. The police arrive, but their indifference is palpable. They dig a shallow grave and bury the body without ceremony or investigation. For the authorities, the death of a nameless black man is an inconvenience, not a matter of justice.

Mehring tries to ignore the burial, but the presence of the dead man lingers as a silent accusation. The farm itself becomes an increasingly uneasy space for him. Nature, far from being tamed, continues in its own rhythms, indifferent to his ownership. Heavy rains and flooding later wash away the soil, revealing the buried body once again. This time, the farmworkers—black laborers who live and work on the land—take it upon themselves to give the man a proper funeral, with dignity and ritual.

By the novel’s end, Mehring is physically and emotionally removed from the farm. The land—and the symbolic truth it holds—has slipped from his grasp. The final image is one of the workers reclaiming, through burial, a moral authority that the “owner” never possessed.

2. Gordimer’s Writing Style

Boberger. Photo:
Bengt Oberger,
CC BY 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
Nadine Gordimer

Gordimer’s style in The Conservationist is challenging yet rewarding. She employs a stream-of-consciousness technique, weaving together Mehring’s present experiences with memories, desires, and half-formed thoughts. The narrative moves fluidly between first-person interior monologue and third-person description, creating a layered psychological portrait.

Her prose is dense with sensory detail. The South African landscape—its dry grasses, storms, and shifting seasons—is rendered with lyrical precision. 

Gordimer often personifies nature, allowing it to act as an unspoken counterpoint to Mehring’s worldview. The land’s resistance to being controlled mirrors the resistance of the black population to apartheid’s constraints.

Symbolism is central to her style. The buried body is the most prominent symbol, representing suppressed histories, ignored injustices, and truths that refuse to stay hidden. The floods serve as both literal events and metaphoric cleansing, washing away the thin covering of lies and indifference.

While lyrical, Gordimer’s style can also be stark and unsentimental. Her sentences often omit conjunctions, creating a clipped rhythm that reflects the protagonist’s inner detachment. She demands close reading—each paragraph is thick with implication.

3. Creating Down-to-Earth Characters

One of Gordimer’s great strengths is her ability to create characters that feel real—rooted in their social and cultural environments.

• Mehring is a deeply flawed human being, yet not a caricature. His arrogance, selfishness, and emotional isolation are tempered by moments of vulnerability and confusion. He is not an overt villain; rather, he is the embodiment of a moral blindness fostered by privilege.

• Jacobus, the black farm foreman, is practical, competent, and grounded. His quiet authority over the farm’s day-to-day life contrasts with Mehring’s detachment. Jacobus is not romanticized; Gordimer presents him as a man navigating survival within an unjust system, yet retaining dignity.

• Terry, Mehring’s son, offers a generational counterpoint—more politically aware, less tolerant of injustice. His estrangement from his father underscores the emotional cost of their ideological divide.

• The farmworkers and local Indian shopkeeper enrich the novel’s texture. They are not mere background figures; they represent communities marginalized by apartheid but bound together through shared history and necessity.

These characters feel authentic because Gordimer resists oversimplification. Their dialogues are believable, their silences equally revealing.

4. Use of Satire and Irony

Irony is embedded in the very title of the novel. Mehring considers himself a “conservationist,” yet he preserves nothing beyond his own wealth and comfort. The land does not need his protection—it thrives and changes despite him.

Gordimer satirizes the colonial mindset through Mehring’s attitudes. He believes ownership grants him moral authority, yet the narrative continually undermines this belief. The police’s perfunctory burial of the black stranger becomes a darkly satirical comment on the apartheid regime’s disregard for black lives.

Perhaps the most potent irony is that true conservation—both of the land and of human dignity—is carried out not by Mehring but by the farmworkers. They, not the legal owner, give the dead man a final resting place that acknowledges his humanity.

Nature itself participates in Gordimer’s irony. The floods, indifferent to human boundaries, undo the shallow grave, forcing the truth into the open. The land refuses to be complicit in concealment.

5. Emotional Aspects of the Main Characters

Boberger. Photo:
Bengt Oberger,
CC BY 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
Nadine Gordimer

Although Mehring is emotionally repressed, the novel is suffused with feeling—much of it revealed in what is left unsaid.

• Mehring’s isolation: He is cut off from family, lovers, and community. Even his interactions with nature are possessive rather than nurturing. His emotional sterility is reflected in the farm’s dryness and in his transactional relationships.

• Moments of vulnerability: Occasionally, Mehring’s facade cracks—he remembers Antonia with longing, or feels a pang of unease at the sight of the dead man. These flashes of humanity make him more than a symbolic figure.

• The workers’ emotional depth: In contrast, the farmworkers’ final burial of the stranger is an act of communal empathy. It is a scene filled with quiet, genuine grief—highlighting the emotional impoverishment of the man who “owns” the land.

• Terry’s emotional clarity: Though absent for much of the novel, Terry’s principled stance and rejection of his father’s values reveal the emotional cost of maintaining moral integrity in a corrupt society.

Gordimer uses these contrasts to great effect, showing that emotional connection—like land—cannot be owned.

6. Social and Environmental Context of South Africa

Boberger. Photo:
Bengt Oberger,
CC BY 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
Nadine Gordimer

The novel cannot be separated from the realities of apartheid South Africa. The laws of the time allocated the vast majority of land to the white minority, dispossessing black South Africans of ancestral territories. Mehring’s farm is a direct product of this injustice.

Gordimer fuses ecological themes with political critique. The exploitation of land mirrors the exploitation of people. Environmental degradation and racial inequality are not parallel issues—they are intertwined consequences of the same system.

The novel also reflects the resilience of the oppressed. The black workers maintain a relationship with the land that is spiritual as well as practical. Their connection is rooted in generations of lived experience, not in deeds or title papers.

Nature in the novel acts as a silent revolutionary. The floods that unearth the body can be read as nature’s refusal to cooperate with human attempts to erase inconvenient truths. This ecocritical reading positions the environment as an active force in the political struggle.

7. Literary Influences and Contemporary Inspiration

Gordimer was part of a vibrant South African literary community that included writers such as J. M. Coetzee and André Brink. While each had distinct styles, they shared a commitment to confronting apartheid’s injustices through literature.

Her realist technique owes something to European novelists like Balzac and Chekhov, who combined detailed social observation with deep psychological insight. The influence of existentialist thinkers such as Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is evident in her focus on individual moral responsibility.

Gordimer’s commitment to portraying complex, morally ambiguous characters aligns with the critical realism advocated by theorist Georg Lukács—an approach that insists fiction should reflect the interplay of individual lives and historical forces without reducing characters to mere symbols.

While her contemporaries sometimes embraced more experimental narrative forms, Gordimer remained committed to psychological realism and political engagement, balancing aesthetic integrity with moral urgency.

8. Social Impact and Legacy

The Conservationist remains a landmark in politically engaged fiction. It exposed the emptiness of white ownership in South Africa, revealing that legal title is meaningless without moral legitimacy.

By centering a flawed white protagonist, Gordimer challenged readers to confront the moral compromises of privilege. Her portrayal of the nameless black man—ignored by authorities but honored by the marginalized—serves as a lasting symbol of resistance to erasure.

The novel’s environmental themes anticipate later discussions about the intersection of ecology and social justice. In an era when climate change and land rights remain pressing global issues, Gordimer’s vision feels strikingly contemporary.

Her work also influenced later generations of writers in South Africa and beyond, who sought to marry literary artistry with political consciousness. In receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, Gordimer was recognized not only for her literary excellence but for her unwavering commitment to truth.

Conclusion

Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist is a rich, multi-layered novel that uses the personal story of one man to illuminate the moral, social, and ecological crises of apartheid South Africa. Through her sophisticated style, grounded characters, sharp irony, and deep emotional resonance, Gordimer critiques the illusion of ownership—whether of land, people, or history.

In the end, the novel reminds us that the land belongs most truly to those who live in harmony with it, and that the truths we try to bury will inevitably resurface. It stands as both a masterpiece of world literature and a vital document of South Africa’s past, with a relevance that endures far beyond its time.