'The Bench': Opsummering af novelle

The Bench is a short story, about a man named Karlie, who lives In South Africa. He has lived all his life in a very segregated part of Africa. He visits Cape Town where he is at a demonstration against apartheid. He sees people of all colours there, which surprises him. He is listening to different speakers at the demonstration, the first one being black. He is proclaiming the rights of the black majority. Karlie is very impressed by what the speakers is saying, and have never really thought about the fact, that black people also have rights. As he is hearing the speaker, he begins thinking about, what an elderly man in his hometown said. He told Karlie that God created black people and white people separately, and therefore they should continue to live separately. Later on, a white woman standing beside the speaker stands up and begins to speak to the crowd. She encourages the black people to refuse to abide by the rules, made by the white man.

After the demonstration Karlie goes to the station where people of mixed races, are walking around. Karlie thinks that they mistrusts each other, and are suspicious of each other. Karlie then remembers what the white woman said at the apartheid. Therefore he decides to sit on a bench with “Europeans only” written on it, to challenge the segregation going on. When he sits down on the bench, nobody seems to notice him at first. While Karlie is, thinking about his hometown, a man tells him to get off the bench. Even though he was about to stand up, he keeps sitting on the bench, without replying the man shouting at him. Karlie quickly assumes that he is gaining supremacy towards the white man, since the man is too afraid to take action himself. Therefore, the white man calls a police officer, who also tells Karlie to get off the bench. Karlie still decides to do nothing and keep calm, while maintaining his silence. After a while, people have gathered around the bench and starts pulling and hitting Karlie, but he continue to resist. In the end, he is arrested, but he is smiling, since he dared to sit on a “Europeans only” bench, and therefore won the challenge.