Essay --

Kassidy Hause CWL 320-06, Fall 2013Dr. Talar ChahinianFinal Paper12-10-13Ways of Dying, Violence, Fantasy & buffooneryZakes Mda was born in 1948 in Herschel, South Africa and is known for being a refreshingist, poet, activist, playwright and cultural theorist. Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda is a impertinent from western form. Literature that was written by Black South African writers between the 1948 and 1994 really captures the oppression and tragic violence that characterized the lives of Blacks under the apartheid. The apartheid or apartness as some Afrikaans call it, describes a system of laws and policies of sleep together and total racial segregation in South Africa that began in 1948 when the subject ara party came to power. The apartheid did not end until 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president in the outgrowth democratic elections. The horrific deaths that are portrayed throughout Zake Mdas refreshing Ways of Dying, were all true ways of dying that Zakes Mda, saw himself, aver about in the newspaper or read when he was doing research. The precise true deaths that he portrays in the novel really paint a picture of the structural and political violence that was going on in South Africa during the apartheid. This violence and oppression really creates a tragic context for the novel however, Zakes Mda challenges the norm of violence and finds a way to portray it as something somewhat idiotic, which in turn makes Ways of Dying quite comical. He also combines fantasise and magic to the novel, which emulates all the spectacular and wonderful move of South African views and traditions. Zakes unique way of combining the depiction of how skew-whiff it is that death has become so normalized in South Africa and magic and fantasy makes Ways of Dying an ... ... Magic and fantasy is also a primaeval theme for this book because magic gives a sense of hope and belief in people and a strength that people never knew they had. The biggest sheath is th e garden, a magic garden of beauty that legato stands among all the unspeakable things that Toloki and Noria are living in. The garden gives them hope that magic and beauty still exist in the world. In this part of the novel the readers are express mirth and smiling because they feel hope and happiness and sense of magic that they are going to get through their issues and be okay. Ways of Dying is a spectacular novel by Zakes Mda, written during the apartheid era, which was a horrific term for South Africans who were abused and murdered by their corrupt government. Zakes Mda was able to exit a sense of history, comedy and hope all into one novel and that any reader would enjoy to read.