The Promise

Because apartheid ends between Part 1 and Part 2 of the novel, many characters assume that the country is headed for a steady improvement and never-before-seen racial harmony. The dangerous feeling of the country’s unrest appears to dissipate as the riots over racial inequality end. However, the novel gradually reveals that all of this optimism is naïve and mismatched with the actual level of reckoning with past injustices that the country is willing to do. On the one hand, the government takes meaningful steps to enact a reckoning, such as the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. On the other hand, many white characters in the novel are not ready to treat the Black people they encounter with more respect.

By the end of the novel, even Amor’s gesture of finally giving Salome ownership of her house feels like an anticlimax because it can have only a limited effect on Salome’s life given her advanced age. This ending highlights the larger theme that past injustices are extremely difficult to address in lasting and meaningful ways, even for those with good intentions. While the novel does not suggest that those with good intentions should give up because of this difficulty, it does suggest that some effects of inequality leave long-lasting marks.