Journey towards otherness. Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup

The central metaphor that serves as a guide through the whole thesis is the notion of journey in its various forms. Before we start to analyze the novel itself it seems necessary to examine more closely what journey is and how it may be defined in the context of the novel. Be it journey as displacement or voluntary relocation, journeys are what defines character's existence that seems always somehow in flux, on the move or ready to move. The characters' world then becomes a mirror image of the world we are living in. While it is true that migration and movement has always been a part of our civilization, in the contemporary context of globalization, the world is, indisputably, in a constant state of flux. Our environment is constantly changing due to the great number of migrating people, exiles or refugees. Territorial security slowly vanishes from our milieu. And so is the novel a realm where, as we shall see where contingency becomes the law not only present in the movement and its circumstances, but in people themselves. The characters' trajectories produce a shape that is by no means seen as a mere background, static pattern that can be classified, it comes to dominate the novel and emerges as a space that is difficult to trace for it seems impossible to define. It forever changes, lacks linearity. To..