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Chapter 59
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
After two weeks, Mandela’s lawyers come to check about appealing the sentence. Mandela inadvertently upsets one of his lawyers by asking about the lawyer’s wife, not realizing that she drowned in an accident just this week. Mandela gets permission from a major at the prison to send a condolence letter, but the major never posts the letter. Mandela focuses his energy on trying to survive his sentence without being broken down by it. He identifies as an optimist but isn’t sure where his optimism comes from.
This is a low point in Mandela’s life story, when he still have several decades in prison left ahead of him. Nevertheless, this is the moment he chooses to reflect on optimism and the role that it plays in his life. Crucially, at this point Mandela doesn’t know when or if he’ll get out of prison, and so he tries to keep himself healthy and mentally fit on the chance that he could get out at any time. This optimism helps to sustain him through what could otherwise be a hopeless situation.
Themes
