Edith Birde, the shared pen name of two South African sisters, uses Because I Killed Him to construct a stratified society in which genetically engineered “blood colors” determine every citizen’s rights, freedoms, and proximity to the guillotine. The Civilized World’s caste hierarchy, in which Blues reign as high-citizens over Greens, Oranges, and Purples, resonates with South Africa’s long history of racial classification and institutionalized inequality, mirroring the structures of domination that took root in South Africa centuries before apartheid was formally codified in 1948.

Historically, Dutch settlers first established colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, imposing hierarchies that evolved into increasingly rigid legal frameworks over the generations that followed. Much later, the Mines and Works Act of 1911 reserved skilled labor for white workers, perpetuating the systemic injustices that kept nonwhite citizens subordinate regardless of their talent. Two years after that, the Natives Land Act of 1913 confined Black South Africans to roughly 7% of the country’s land, dispossessing the majority in order to benefit a white minority (“The Natives Land Act of 1913.” South African History Online, 21 July 2026). By the 1920s (the decade that the novel’s Jazz Age setting evokes), segregation was already entrenched in South African law and daily life. In the novel, the Civilized World is designed to critique these issues; as Bruce tells Loredana, “the only meaningful power comes from blood,” and money alone “can't buy freedom” (33). 

Historically, when apartheid was officially enacted in 1948, it formalized the injustices that colonial rule had established centuries ago. The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified every citizen by race, while the Group Areas Act of 1950 dictated where each group could reside. Additionally, the country’s pass laws required all nonwhite South Africans to carry identity documents called pass books, or else they would face imprisonment (Clark, Nancy L., and William H. Worger. South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Routledge, 2013). In the novel, the Blood Rings take the place of pass books, dictating each citizen’s transactions and area access, and low-citizens who fail to maintain adequate “civil credits” face arrest or execution, just as Black South Africans faced detention for pass law violations. Similarly, the novel’s entourage system echoes the exploitative labor arrangements of apartheid, where nonwhite workers depended entirely on white employers for survival. 

Beyond South Africa, the novel also draws upon an array of other cultural references to racial inequality. Most notably, the low-citizens’ limited access to specific districts and the Civilized World’s prohibitions against fraternization between castes draws upon the real-world injustices of Jim Crow laws in the United States. These statutes were designed to marginalize Black citizens and enforce white supremacy across nearly every aspect of public life.

Additionally, the novel’s weekly televised execution broadcast, Bloody Sunday, connects the Civilized World to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. On January 30, 1972, British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civil-rights demonstrators in Derry, killing 14, in an event that became globally synonymous with state violence against a marginalized population (“Bloody Sunday.” CAIN Web Service, Ulster University, 3 Sep. 2025). Just as Bloody Sunday galvanized resistance among Irish nationalists and deepened sectarian divisions, the novel’s “Heretics” respond to systemic oppression with escalating violence, illustrating the cyclical relationship between institutional brutality and revolutionary extremism—a pattern that recurs across unequal societies.