Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tsotsi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apartheid and Racism
Parents and Children
Identity and Memory
Hatred, Sympathy, and God
Habit vs. Choice
Summary
Analysis
The same Saturday Tsotsi takes the baby to the ruins and thinks though his behavior, Gumboot Dhlamini’s funeral occurs, and Boston regains consciousness. The funeral occurs at a plot of ground where people were already burying their loved ones and where the authorities, after the fact, put up a fence and planted some trees. Termites ate the fence, and the trees mostly died. The “Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township” performs the funeral. The gravedigger, Big Jacob, asks the Reverend who Gumboot is, but the Reverend doesn’t know. He walks back to his church in distress.
The authorities’ half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts to decorate the Black township’s cemetery shows how the South African government under apartheid neglected and oppressed its Black citizens. That the Rev. Henry Ransome doesn’t know Gumboot Dhlamini’s name, meanwhile, suggests that while the Reverend may have good intentions, religious ministry is not enough to overcome racism and segregation under apartheid: although the novel has not explicitly stated this, it is implied that Gumboot was Black while the Reverend is white, and it seems the white Reverend does not know his Black potential congregants very well.
Themes
Boston wakes up to see a boy, playing with a bicycle-wheel rim, watching him. Die Aap and Butcher have deposited Boston in a back alley. This is the third time Boston has woken since Tsotsi beat him. The previous times, he passed out again from the pain. This time, he sits up and notices someone has stolen his pants. He sees “a badly torn khaki pair” in the alley. Boston tries to say something, can’t, and waves at the khakis. The boy runs away. Boston creeps to the trousers, but movement causes him pain, and he ends up weeping. The boy returns to stare at Boston. Boston exits the alley without knowing his destination, noting what Tsotsi did to him and thinking, “It’s all finished now.”
Various details in this passage—that a child is using a bicycle-wheel rim as a toy, that someone has stolen Boston’s pants, and so forth—illustrate the poverty in which the Black township lives under apartheid. Boston’s thought, “It’s all finished now,” hints that while he disliked the gang’s violence, he may have derived his identity from membership in the gang and feels that his life has ended since Tsotsi, the gang’s leader, has rejected him.
Themes
Butcher and Die Aap are waiting on the street outside Tsotsi’s room, arguing about whether Tsotsi will show up. Neither knows whether Tsotsi beating Boston means the gang has broken up. Butcher and Die Aap really began worrying about the gang the day after the beating, when they didn’t have Tsotsi to tell them what to do. They wandered around all day until they arrived outside Tsotsi’s. They’ve just resolved to leave when they spot Tsotsi walking up the street.
This passage reveals how Butcher and Die Aap are trapped in habits and appear to lack control over their own lives. When an unexpected event like Tsotsi beating Boston interrupts the gang’s habits, they do not know what to do. Rather than making choices for themselves, they feel they need someone else, Tsotsi, to make choices for them.
Themes
Tsotsi walks past Butcher and Die Aap without speaking because he hasn’t decided what to do about them. When a woman with a baby walks past, Butcher yells at her to feed the baby next to him. The woman spits and hurries away. Tsotsi comes to his door to watch what’s going on. Butcher yells an obscene suggestion after the woman. Tsotsi, seeing the woman with the baby, has a thought.
Once again, members of the gang—in this case, Butcher—seem to have a habitual reaction upon encountering a woman who is alone: automatically, without thinking about it, they assault or harass the woman. Although the novel does not tell us what Tsotsi thinks when he sees the woman with the baby, it seems to be something different from what Butcher is thinking—which illustrates that Tsotsi, unlike Butcher, is breaking with the gang’s habits.
Themes
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Butcher asks Tsotsi whether they should “find one and play.” Tsotsi shakes his head but invites Butcher and Die Aap inside. Inside, Butcher asks about the smell. Tsotsi, without replying, throws the baby’s old rags into the backyard. Butcher tries to tell stories like Boston used to, but all his stories are very short. Tsotsi asks Butcher and Die Aap where Boston is. Butcher says he doesn’t know. Trying to maintain conversation, he adds that Boston could be at Soekie’s, and that he and Die Aap left Boston in the back alley behind it.
Since Butcher has just been sexually harassing a woman on the street, his ominous phrase “find one and play” seems to indicate that he wants the gang to find another woman and sexually assault her. By refusing, Tsotsi breaks further with the gang’s old habits. Now that Tsotsi is breaking with the gang’s habits and with his old “gangster” identity, the members of the gang don’t know how to relate to one another—they can’t even keep up a regular conversation.
Themes
Tsotsi stops thinking about Boston because he has started thinking about milk, the baby, and his memory of the yellow dog. He realizes he can’t control his thoughts. He’s also become aware of Butcher and Die Aap as individuals, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to tell them to do. Tsotsi has become conscious of making choices, which disturbs him and prevents him from choosing. Agitated, Tsotsi walks to the door. Butcher asks him what they’re going to do, and Tsotsi blurts that they’re going to the city. Even though that could mean anything, Butcher and Die Aap follow Tsotsi. On the way out, Butcher asks Die Aap whether he smelled the odor in Tsotsi’s room.
When Tsotsi was acting out the stereotypical role of “gangster,” he didn’t feel conscious of making choices—he just did what a “gangster” would naturally do. Now that his relationship to the baby and his memories are making him aware of himself as an individual, not a stereotype, he realizes that he is making choices—in fact, he has been making choices all along. Meanwhile, the yellow dog once again comes to Tsotsi’s mind while he is thinking about the baby, suggesting the dog has something to do with parenthood.
Themes
