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Chapter 58
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Long Walk to Freedom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Division
Negotiation, Democracy, and Progress
Nonviolent Protest vs. Violent Protest
The Value of Optimism
Summary
Analysis
As Mandela and the others are taken off in a police van, one of the officers tries to console Mandela by saying that there’s so much demand for his release that he’ll probably be out in a couple years anyway. The van takes them all to Robben Island, the prison Mandela was at before. When Mandela gets to his cell, he finds that he can walk the length of it in three paces. He is 46 years old. At prison, he and the others have to crush heavy stones into gravel. There are more prisoners than Mandela remembers from the last time he was on the island. Mandela complains about how African prisoners are forced to wear shorts while Indian prisoners, like Kathy, get long trousers, so one day someone dumps trousers on his cell floor. But when Mandela realizes he’s the only African prisoner who received trousers, he complains, and they get taken away.
Mandela’s imprisonment is a logical outcome of the government’s efforts to restrain him—now, instead of just being barred from using a car, he is limited to moving around in a cell that’s only three paces long. The fact that Mandela is only 46 and faces a lifelong sentence suggests that he is realizing that he might spend his next several decades in that small cell. The issue of shorts versus trousers might seem like a small or even arbitrary difference between prisoners, but it’s significant to the government because it’s a way to mark Black men’s lower status. And so, it becomes significant to Mandela to fight this small injustice, not just for himself but for all of his fellow prisoners.
Themes
