Analyse af Rayda Jacobs' novelle 'The Guilt'

“The Guilt” is a short-story written by Rayda Jacobs, written in a third-person narrative, and follows the events of one critical evening of a woman named Lillian Thurgood.

Lillian Thurgood is an aging white woman living in what would be considered a “white” neighborhood in South Africa. Despite being a widow, she lives her remaining days quite decently. She tends to her over-flowered garden and spends her evenings talking to other elderly women that live around the block, protected by her well-trained guard-dogs.

Indeed, she lives a decent live in her older days. A change of government however, has indirectly started to bother her. Almost every day Lillian Thurgood is confronted by poor blacks that beg or hoax her into giving them money – either as “donations” to faked organizations or by doing trivial tasks. This is yet again the case on a late winter morning as Lillian tends to her garden. She notices the growls of her dogs, and considers the possibility of it being the local postman dropping by. Instead, it’s a young black man looking for work. When Lillian says that she has none, he hands over a forged letter from an organization asking for donations. Lillian agrees to hand out a donation, but get’s annoyed when she finds her self debating whether she should hand out 5 rand (a sum described as quite a bit for a pensioner like herself) or meager 23-cents. The young black man, William, accepts the 5 rand she settles on, but says that he cannot accept this large sum without doing work for it. Even against Lillian’s insisting, William decides to do labor for the 5 rand. As he’s done however, he feels obliged to get more money for the one hour of work he did. When Lillian is confronted with this, she feels threatened and enraged. Her dogs pin William down, and afterwards she threatens him with a non-loaded pistol. Frightened, William runs away, leaving Lillian both shocked at her own behavior and the guilt she feels.