Analysis of 'Loot' by Nadine Gordimer
"I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?"
Superiority or inferiority in personality reveals no difference when it comes to the case of retaining _or regaining_ who one has strived to become his/her whole lifetime.
Natural events, mostly catastrophic, play the leading role in this short story. A different consequence caused by the powerful earthquake, emerged a hidden side of human beings' character; converting them into looters.
These people hushed their exploitative hoarder souls for years, but as the past detritus treasures glistened on the sea-bed; the wild nature of soul freed itself. People wanted to have more and more; no matter what. When they were given the chance, people rushed to take; take, take.
Everyone becomes a looter in this short story, so they are all the same, most probably in searching for the glorious past they lost, or were rubbed off by Time, over the sea-bed where it is given that time does not, never did, exist down there where the materiality of the past and the present as they lie has no chronological order, all is one, all is nothing – or all is possible at once.
No name and no specific character is referred to in 'Loot', even the most selective looter is not introduced properly personally since he lost his politically well-known name to Time and even hoarding the past didn't help him retain _or regain_ his fame. Who recognized them, that day, where they lie?
The story is related from two points of view; one is the defective report presented by the media which knows nothing but what's vivid, the other is by the writer who believes to know more though does not relate it all in detail.
The climax of the story is where nature, the most powerful being, shows people how exploitatively uncivilized they can be; then draws them all back for itself, since it is the most exploitative of all.
The treasures down the sea-bed are professionally described in a way that cheap and expensive, important and unimportant pieces of stuff are gathered together down there and people take them regardless of the value.
But the human version of the sea, the retired long-divorced man, who is not, cannot be as exploitative as his natural lad; is a hundred percent similarly hoarding. In the final battle, seeking for his long lost self, he is defeated by the sea. Besides, it is indicated that somehow he believed his journey will end as soon as he finds the most important _thing. Because he kept 'The Great Wave' over his bed and did not care about it. All that mattered to him was to retain who he was, but innocently unlucky he was; he didn't know at the end; no carnation or rose floats.
The End!
