Socio-historical impulse in literature: a study of Peter Abrahams' Mine Boy

Abstract

Peter Abrahams is one of the popular South African novelists whose novels are read not only for mere entertainment but for the information they come with. It is a fact that one of the functions of literature is to offer entertainment to the reader. However, if the sole aim of the writer in a particular work of art is to entertain, then such work should not be taken very serious. Works of imagination are usually the author’s weapon to fight certain abnormalities in a given society. This is why it is believed that fiction is a mirror through which a society is seen. Peter Abrahams is one of those who believe that with fiction, certain abnormalities in a society can be remedied thus Mine Boy albeitseen by some as a journalistic history of the South African society, like other works of art, is pure fiction, whose inspiration comes by what happens around the author. Our interest in this paper therefore, is to explore Peter Abrahams Mine Boy and find out how adequately Abrahams has managed his facts in the writing of Mine Boy as to qualify the novel as fiction rather than history.

Keywords: Literature, Abrahams, protest literature, fact and fiction, South Africa