Themes and Analysis
Many of Gordimer's works have explored the impact of apartheid on individuals in South Africa. In Burger's Daughter a theme that is present in several of her novels is that of racially divided societies in which well-meaning whites unexpectedly encounter a side of black life they did not know about. Rosa Burger's role in society is imprinted on her from a young age by her activist parents, and she grows up in the shadow of her father's political legacy. While Lionel Burger was able to work with black activists in the ANC, Rosa discovers that with rise of the Black Consciousness Movement in the mid-1960s, many young blacks tend to view white liberals as irrelevant in their struggle for liberation. She witnesses this first hand listening to the black university student (Duma Dhladhla) and her childhood friend "Baasie" (Zwelinzima Vulindlela), who both dismiss her father as unimportant.
Another theme in the book that is present in several of her novels is that of ordinary people living in oppressive regimes being forced into making difficult decisions. When Rosa realises that whites are not always welcome in anti-apartheid liberation movements, she turns her back on all that her father worked for and leaves the country. Part of Rosa's struggle is forging her own identity, and this decision to rebel against her dead father is a bold step, although she does return again to become a committed activist and ultimately a political prisoner. But what Rosa achieves is what her father never could: to have a life of her own while still remaining politically committed.
The perspective of Burger's Daughter alternates between Rosa's internal monologue (often directed towards her father or her semi-lover Conrad), and the anonymous narrator, who Gordimer calls, "Rosa's conscious analysis, her reasoning approach to her life and to this country, and my exploration as a writer of what she doesn't know even when she thinks she's finding out". Just as Rosa struggles to find her place as a white in the anti-apartheid liberation movement, so does Gordimer, a white South African writer. In an interview in 1980, Gordimer said that "when we have got beyond the apartheid situation—there's a tremendous problem for whites, unless whites are allowed in by blacks, and unless we can make out a case for our being accepted and we can forge a common culture together, whites are going to be marginal".
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