" my analysis of " LOOT

"Loot" by Nadine Gordimer

This was a story that I had a hard time to understand it. Not because it was written ambiguously but rather because it was kind of a revelation for me too.

We can see from the first sentence that there is an earthquake .the biggest earthquake that ever happened. The earthquake eviscerates the earth and here we see the revelation.

This particular earthquake is different instead of causing floods, it drew back the vast ocean and revealed hidden things and “the most secret level of our world “.These things in this sea belong to different eras. But why these things were in the sea in the first place? It is unknown but it seems to me that the existence of this material thing in the sea has one purpose: Those things are absolutely useless to the sea so one might think that the sea revealed them in order to lure its prey inside of itself, at the depth of five fathoms.

And in this case, the prey is the population (general) that had just lost their home and shelter by the destructive hand of the earthquake.

The most secret level of our world and the objects in it are timeless.

The narrator tells us that "it is given that time does not never did, exist down here where the materiality of the past and present as they lie has no chronological order, all is one, all is nothing -- or all is possible at once."

These objects which are useless to the sea appear of high value to the greedy mad eyes of this population. The people also reveal something about themselves. It’s like the earthquake not only revealed the secret level of our world but the secret level of human hearts as well and that secret level is greed or more like our natural instinctive behavior of survival in times of danger and scarcity.”… that must have belonged to the rich, it's mine now if you don't grab what's over there someone else will.”

The narrator tells us “while grabbing they were able to forget the wreck of their houses and the loss of time-bound possessions”

It’s like the more they take the more they will be able to forget the pain of loss, loss of their possessions. And losing the Privilege of being the owner of those possessions is only a matter of time.

It is stated that no living creature, no fish no nothing, is present in the middle of this sea “the living inhabitants of this unearth had been swept up and away with the water.”

And eventually, we see that the predator, in this case, the sea, is cuingly closing down on the poor people who are stained by their greed. The sea adds them to its timeless treasury.

Those people sought objects now they are united with those objects (object of greed) deep in the depth of the devouring sea.

like a perfect Venus flytrap