Kiefer Callewaert

“The Life of the Imagination” is a multi-faceted short story written by Nadine Gordimer in 1968. Superficially, it is the story of a woman growing tiresome of the formulaic life she has created with her family. The monocle of disinterest through which she perceives her daily life causes her to form an affectionate relationship with the family’s doctor. However, the closer we inspect, the more convinced we become that the story is not at all about a woman and her affair. Instead, it is about a woman with a vivid imagination; a woman so invested in her visionaries that she’d go as far as to conjure up an entirely new life within the confines of her overactive mind. This essay will analyze the imagination of the figure through which we perceive the story. It will utilize our understanding of Barbara’s unreliability in order to ask questions about which events in the story actually took place, and what thematic implications the reader is supposed to derive from the indistinguishability of fact from fiction.

In a story where certainty is near unattainable, and fact is a matter of speculation, it is important for the reader to identify the few aspects that we can safely assume to be true. On a very basic level, we can assuredly assume that the story consists of five characters, each with varying prevalence and importance. These characters include Barbara, her husband Arthur, their two children Pete and Bruce, and finally, Dr. Usher. We can safely assume the existence of these characters through both their interactions with one another, and reassurance from the narrator. “He [Arthur] and Barbara had a serene, effacing house… They had children (Gordimer, 332).” This line adequately justifies the existence of each family member, as we are presented this information through what we have to assume to be an impartial, invisible narrator. However, this does not confirm the existence of Dr. Usher, the man with whom Barbara has her affair. This confirmation isn’t granted until later, when he meets and interacts with several characters whom we have already preordained to be real. He engages in dialogue with the wife and her children, and physically interacts with both Pete and Bruce in the form of administering a shot. This proves beyond a reasonable doubt that we can trust the mere existence of Dr. Usher, as several previously established characters could, hypothetically, vouch for his existence. The only other fact the reader can identify is the existence of Barbara’s vivid imagination. This is conveyed through an interjection by the narrator, that reads in parentheses, “Barbara has such a vivid imagination, she is so artistic (Gordimer, 331).” We can further establish this character trait as truth simply by referring to the title of the story, ‘The Life of the Imagination.’ This piece of literature appears to be about Baraba’s life, so we can safely assume that the title seeks to confirm to the reader that the story is best understood when operating under the pretenses that her imagination is an irrefutable fact.

The establishment of Barbara’s overactive imagination proves problematic in the sense that it forces the reader to question which aspects of the following story actually occurred, and which aspects were simply a product of her psyche. Unfortunately, we cannot use the form of the text, nor can we use the language, to answer this question. There is no apparent alteration in tone, and there is no changing pattern in writing style that we could use to define which events took place within her mind, and which events took place in reality. This is strongly enhanced near the end of the story, when Barbara imagines a scenario where several robbers break into her house, and stab her as she sleeps. The way this segment is written leads the reader to believe that this crime was actually committed. The author uses vivid language to paint an image of the occurrence in the readers’ mind, a tactic used throughout the story when discussing romantic encounters between Barbara and Dr. Usher. However, as we learn in the next line, this was an imagined scenario, as she is awoken the next morning by her children. The reader goes from being relatively certain that something did occur, to being entirely certain that it didn’t. This makes it nearly impossible for the reader to identify which scenes and which actions described previously had actually occurred, as we are now aware that these depicted scenarios can be products of her imagination. This greatly exemplifies the concept of the unreliable narrator, as illustrated in Chapter 7 of Rimmon-Kenan’s publication, “Narrative Fiction.” “The third potential source of unreliability is the colouring of the narrator’s account by a questionable value-scheme (Kenan, 104).” In this line, the term “value-scheme” is used interchangeably with a character’s ‘norms’ or basic tendencies. This solidifies the concept that Barbara is unreliable, as her ‘norms,’ or her imagination, render most truth’s in the story to be questionable.

Given the fact that the reader cannot rely on the narrator, nor can they rely on context clues like the form or the language of the text, it is actually quite impossible to distinguish fact from fiction inside the narration, and this could very well be the author’s intent. It is entirely possible that the author intended to leave the reader with a constant streamline of unanswerable questions. The reader is then forced to ask “why is the author doing this? What message are they trying to convey?”

We can use a quote from the author, Nadime Gordimer, to begin to answer this question. “Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life, and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area (Guardian, 2014).”

This quote is important on two fronts. Firstly, the reader can safely assume that Gordimer viewed her writing as a way of thinking about fundamental tendencies of life. With this realization, the reader can make conclusions about themes and truth’s being conveyed by the author, and can be relatively certain that these truths were intentional. However, the second half of this quote proves to be more useful in helping the reader understand the intent of this perplexing short story. Gordimer claims that through writing, people might be able to understand so much as a fraction of their surroundings. This would then imply that the majority of the world cannot be understood. The author reflects this theme of uncertainty in “The Life of the Imagination.” Just as Gordimer feels she can only understand a small portion of life, the reader can only identify a small segment of this story as fact (This would be the existence of the characters, and Barbara’s imagination, as I referred to previously.) Aside from these basic truths, we cannot begin to comprehend the true extent of the story, as we have no way of identifying what actually took place in said story. By claiming that even through our best efforts, we can only hope to make sense of one small area, the author asserts that the majority of our world is inexplicable, just as truth in her story is very nearly unattainable.

“The Life of the Imagination” is Nadime Gordimer’s mirror through which she can reflect her perception that absolute truth is unattainable. The reader could spend hours on end trying to identify which events actually took place, but we could never hope to reach a definitive conclusion. Gordimer seems to believe that this same theme is prevalent in life itself. She believes that she could work her entire life, fruitlessly attempting to understand her surroundings, and even then, she would be left with more questions than answers.

Works Cited

“Nadine Gordimer: A Life in Quotes.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 July 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/14/nadine-gordimer-a-life-in-quotes.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. Taylor & Francis, 1994.

Gordimer, Nadine. “The Life of the Imagination.” The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 1968.

About the Author

Kiefer Callewaert was a student in Comp Lit 121: International Short Story in Spring 2021, taught by Juan Carlos Cabrera Pons.