Power, Fear, and Violence Theme Analysis

“The Lemon Orchard” is largely a story of how an imbalance of power harms the underclass in society—but also how it corrupts the upper classes. The four white men who take a “coloured” (multiracial) man captive in the story clearly benefit from their privileged position relative to him, as they’re able to move through society without being judged by or punished for the color of their skin the way that non-white people are. But it becomes clear that they’re also possessed by a deep-seated fear of losing that social status, and as a result, they inflict senseless violence upon oppressed people like the coloured man. The story makes the case that such an imbalance of power is often unearned—and that the fear of this losing privilege that’s so arbitrarily given can lead those in the higher tiers of society to violently suppress others in order to secure their social standing.

The story takes place during South African apartheid (a period of legally enforced racial segregation), and it’s clear that white South Africans have immense power and privilege while non-white South Africans are treated as an underclass—regardless of whether or not white people have actually earned that power. The white men in the story steal away the coloured man in the night to whip him as punishment for a perceived crime: being rude to a white minister at the men’s church. The fact that something as benign as talking back to a white person of authority is treated an offense that’s punishable with violence suggests that white people hold an immense amount of social and legal influence over non-white people.

This imbalance of power along racial lines exists in spite of the fact that many non-white South Africans, like the coloured man in the story, are well-educated and have important roles in society. As the four white men march the coloured man through the titular lemon orchard to whip him, the leader of the group points out that the coloured man is “one of those educated bushmen” and “a teacher in a school for which we pay.” The white men, by contrast, are implied to be less educated and perhaps of a lower socioeconomic status given their use of crude language and racial slurs, their mockery of educated people, and their complaints about funding the school. The power that white people hold over non-white people in apartheid South Africa, then, is seemingly unearned: it’s based solely on skin color rather than on individuals’ achievements, competence, or earning power. That the white men feel justified in enacting vigilante justice against the coloured man also suggests that they don’t fear legal repercussions in the same way that non-white people do. The coloured man was already whipped once for his supposed transgression against the white minister, yet he didn’t seek legal repercussions for this abuse—likely because he knew he’d lose the case given the court’s bias in favor of white people. The white men, however, are confident that they can get away with “teach[ing] him [the coloured man] a lesson” by whipping him. It’s clear that under apartheid, white people enjoy undue privilege and are able to exert violent control over non-white people simply because the system is built to enable such an imbalance of power.

Though this vast inequality between white and non-white people under apartheid is socially advantageous for white people, it also creates a constant sense of fear and insecurity for them, leading them to violently suppress those they perceive as a threat to their privileged position. One of the white men in the group accuses the coloured man of “shivering with fear” as they walk through the orchard, yet the white men are clearly the ones who are afraid (and the coloured man is clearly shivering because the white men only allowed him to wear a thin jacket on a cold night). The impending whipping is an extreme overreaction to the coloured man’s perceived slight, suggesting that the white men are actually terrified of the coloured man and feel the need to suppress him at all costs. The fact that the men’s privileged position in society is unearned and based on something as arbitrary their skin color means that they’ll always feel a sense of insecurity over their status, as evidenced by the leader’s insistence that the coloured man refer to him as baas (“master”) to reaffirm his sense of power over the situation. Within this tenuous dynamic, any challenge to a white person’s authority is seen as a threat to their power that must be met with violence.

This deep-seated insecurity and fear is further highlighted by the white men’s need to threaten and belittle the coloured man and inflict smaller acts of violence upon him. As they walk through the orchard, the leader hurls racial slurs at the coloured man and threatens to kill him with his shotgun; one of the other white men, Andries, punches the coloured man in the face when he refuses to respond to their provocations. Despite their claims that the coloured man is pathetic and inferior to them, it logically follows that they wouldn’t treat him with this level of brutality if they didn’t see him as a formidable threat. In their eyes, the coloured man’s willingness to challenge the minister was perhaps a symbolic act of challenging white authority in general—a terrifying prospect for the white men that leads them to violently suppress the coloured man.

The four white men in “The Lemon Orchard” have seemingly done nothing to earn the social status they’ve been given; they were simply lucky to have been born white under an oppressive regime that happens to privilege their race over others. Yet the secret way in which they carry out the late-night whipping suggests that, on some level, they know that the power they hold is undeserved and that the violence they’re committing is unjustified. The story thus implies that even those who benefit from apartheid know that the system is unfairly tipped to favor them—and that eradicating this power imbalance altogether is the only way to do away with the fear and violence that it perpetuates.