A Semiotic Reading of Patterns of Trauma in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit

Abstract

This paper conjugates Ferdinand De Saussure’s and Charles Sanders Peirce’s theories on the sign with recent developments in literary semiotics to analyze textual and symbolic patterns that connote apartheid and postapartheid traumas in Bitter Fruit. It first connects Dangor’s text to the universe of signs of individual and social disintegration, to explain that characters’ tragic experiences and posttraumatic stress disorders imbue the text with its historically based meanings. Then, it demonstrates that by mapping out traumas bred by the age of iron, the text discloses expressive glimpses of the burning question of reconciliation and identity in the post-apartheid era. At a final level, the semiotic reading of Bitter Fruit foregrounds the ambivalent meaning of semiotic patterns in Dangor’s narrative, suggesting the social tension in which the text was created, the aesthetic representation of which not only signifies individual and collective sufferings but also the author’s essential gesture in the country’s effort to build a fairer and more humane nation.