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Chapter 64
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
One day in summer 1965, Mandela and the other prisoners receive particularly good food. The word is that the Red Cross will be coming for an inspection. Mandela manages to get a meeting with the Red Cross representative that’s unmonitored. This first representative isn’t very helpful, but in later years, the Red Cross will fight more effectively for prison improvements.
The Red Cross visit is a hopeful occasion for Mandela because it reminds him that as much as the South African government wants to lock him away in isolation to stop his influence from spreading, there are still people who are watching and paying attention to what happens to him in prison.
Themes
Studying is important to Mandela, and he and the others struggle to get approved for it and get the right books. Newspapers are very valuable to the political prisoners, but they’re forbidden from reading news. Sometimes they steal newspapers that guards use as sandwich wrappers out of the garbage. Prisoners often get sent to isolation for arbitrary offenses, something Mandela complains to the Red Cross about every time they arrive.
In this passage, newspapers go from literal garbage to prison guards to the most valuable resource for prisoners. This dynamic hints at how dire conditions are for prisoners while also highlighting the privileges and good things the guards have compared to the prisoners they oversee.
Themes
