The Pickup

Introduction

From a simple scenario—a girl-meets-boy "pickup"—Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup becomes an exploration of questions about freedom, responsibility, love, and identity. In their efforts to forge a life together and find a place that can accommodate their respective dreams, the two central characters enact both metaphorically and literally the opening lines of a poem that figures prominently in the novel: "Let us go to another country / Not yours or mine / And start again."

The novel begins in an unnamed country that is clearly South Africa, where Julie Summers, a young publicist from an affluent, prestigious white family, sets her sights on the dark-skinned foreigner who has repaired her car. Ibrahim ibn Musa, as she only much later learns is his real name, stands out dramatically from her usual circle of cohorts, a group of like-minded intellectuals, poets, and freethinkers, identified collectively as The Table, who meet daily at the EL-AY Café. The open-minded and seemingly worry-free Julie invites a serious, reserved, and cautious Ibrahim to join the life of The Table. As Julie and Ibrahim become lovers, we learn that he is an illegal immigrant only posing as a mechanic. We also learn that Julie not only despises but is also embarrassed by her father's capitalistic values and privileged lifestyle, the "beautiful terrace of her father's house" that "she didn't care to call . . . home" (p. 138). But it is precisely to her father's lifestyle that Ibrahim aspires. As an "insider," Julie wants out. As an "outsider," Ibrahim wants in.

Within their complex relationship, it often seems unclear whether there is any love, not to mention mutual love, between Julie and Ibrahim, and, if so, what the nature of that love is. Desire and responsibility continuously come into conflict with each other. Ibrahim can't help considering Julie's relationship with him "another of the adventures she prided herself on being far enough from her father's beautiful house always to be ready for" (p. 112). Yet he "felt something unwanted, . . . he felt responsibility—that's it—responsibility for her. Though he had none" (pp. 173-174). Near the end of the novel, the narrator refers to Ibrahim's "love for her," but "he can admit it to himself only" (p. 266). As for Julie, she feels that her uncle knows "she loves the man who appeared to her, legs, body, finally head from under a car" (p. 73). At the same time, Julie cannot bring herself to enlist her father's help in Ibrahim's struggle to avoid deportation.

Once the couple arrive in Ibrahim's homeland—also never named—it emerges as an oasis for Julie, while remaining for Ibrahim a place he wishes desperately to escape. Ibrahim is not convinced that his country is anything more to Julie than the location of another of her adventures, but Julie finds in it the kind of home that neither her father nor even The Table could provide: "You must understand, I've never lived in a family before, just made substitutes out of other people, ties, I suppose—though I didn't realize that, either, then. There are . . . things . . . between people here, that are important, no, necessary to them" (p. 187). Of all the members of Ibrahim's family, his mother has the greatest impact on Julie. Her gentle but deeply devoted piety sets the tone for a household and family in which relationships carry responsibility, ultimately drawing Julie in (and, it would seem, driving Ibrahim out). Gordimer addresses the theme of religion with great subtlety. On the one hand, there is the mechanical call-to-prayer that breaks the reflective silence of Julie's early morning desert walks; on the other, there is the way the religious life in Ibrahim's family contributes to a web of care and to the significance of daily life, neither of which Julie has ever felt to this degree.

The novel concludes with Ibrahim leaving his homeland for America and Julie staying behind. His family's public explanation is that she will follow him, but they know she might not. The implications of such a decision are uncertain. Does Julie think she has found—or maybe become—her true self in Ibrahim's country? If so, has this development overwhelmed her relationship with Ibrahim, so that she must sacrifice it in order to live authentically? Does Ibrahim's decision to leave without her indicate a similar thought process, in terms of his own need to live the life he feels he must? The nuances of Julie and Ibrahim's situation force us to weigh their conflicting perspectives. In the end, even if Julie and Ibrahim both deserve our sympathy, they nonetheless are competing for it. Questions persist throughout the novel about whether it is Julie or Ibrahim who is in fact freer, more open-minded, and more faithful to a true self.

Discussion Questions

1. Why does Julie stay in Ibrahim's country?
2. Why is Ibrahim afraid to bring Julie to his country?
3. What does the desert signify for Julie? What does it signify for Ibrahim?
4. What does Julie's "elegant suitcase" represent to Ibrahim?
5. Why is neither Julie nor Ibrahim's country ever identified by name?
6. Why does Julie later think that during her time with Ibrahim in her homeland, they "were playing at reality; it was a doll's house, the cottage"? (p. 164)
7. In Arabic, the name "Abdu" literally means "servant" (and is often an abbreviated form of "Abdullah," meaning "servant of God"). Why does Ibrahim choose this name for himself while living in Julie's country?
8. In what sense, if any, do Julie and Ibrahim love each other?
9. Is Julie's relationship with Ibrahim an expression of her true self, or is it, as Ibrahim often believes, merely another one of her "adventures"?
10. Why does Julie come to feel closer to Ibrahim's family than to her own?
11. Why does Gordimer title this novel The Pickup?

For Further Reflection

1. Is it possible to entirely escape the effects of family on one's identity?
2. Is living in a way that is truest to oneself necessarily in conflict with responsibility to others?

About Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 to Jewish immigrants in the small town of Springs, Transvaal, South Africa, a mining town outside of Johannesburg. She attended school at a convent, and published her first short story as a teenager in the children's section of a Johannesburg Sunday newspaper. In 1945 she spent a year at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Living in Johannesburg since 1948, Gordimer has been a vocal activist against apartheid, publicly criticizing the government's policies and activities. A relentless defender of freedom of self-expression—three of her novels were banned in South Africa—Gordimer has served as a steering committee member of the Anti-Censorship Action Group. Her writing illustrates the need for political change and, more generally, the dynamics at the intersection of public and private life. But it is the combination of these qualities with her immense storytelling skills and the power with which she addresses such universal themes as responsibility, freedom, and the nature of love that has won her a reputation as one of the world's great writers. Among her many literary honors are the 1974 Booker Prize and the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature.

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