"The Lemon Orchard", by Alex La Guma: Exploring Stable Meaning, the Perversion of Nature, and Discursive Communities

South African writer Alex La Guma was an active member of his country's non-white liberation movement. One of the 156 people accused in the Treason Trial of 1956, La Guma wrote his first book, "A Walk in the Night and Other Stories", in 1962 (Wade 15). "The Lemon Orchard," a story which appeared in this debut work, is a gripping piece about the horror and cruelty of racism. In the story, La Guma describes in chilling detail how a …

…themselves, and because there is no need for him to describe the beating, it is nevertheless important to realize that the story cannot be entirely stable since there will always be discursive communities that may in principle misinterpret "The Lemon Orchard," thinking that it condones racism. In subsequent papers, scholars can perhaps explore the various ways different discursive communities understand not only "The Lemon Orchard," but also investigate this phenomenon in other apparently stable texts.