Isabel feels like her life is perfectly ordinary, but she doesn’t fully recognize how her many privileges (as a white person under apartheid) make her life far easier than Thami’s. For instance, the Black maid, “Auntie,” takes care of Isabel’s daily needs. Although Isabel and her family call Auntie by an affectionate, familial-sounding nickname, it can also be read as somewhat condescending, since Auntie isn’t really a part of their family. Isabel doesn’t seem to recognize that the racial divide between her family and Auntie means that there’s a significant power imbalance between them. This reflects how the apartheid system both exploits Black people for white people’s benefit
and blinds white people to the humanity of the Black people they exploit.