The need to tell freedom in Peter Abraham's TELL FREEDOM

         


            The author had to tell freedom,he needed to be free. He had to write about the social inequalities,discrimination and suffering passes through. The novel Tell Freedom
is born out of Peter Abraham's commiment to his society to express the inequality based on colour.
           The novel tells the story of Peter Abraham's life form childhood to adulthood,from the slumps of Johannesburg to the country up around him and finally to England. The author relates how he won education against all odds.
            Lee peeps into the South Africans world of Apartheid. The novel begins with the experience of Lee. He was born into a poor family,his father is an Ethiopian and mother is coloured. His colour affects him in life.
           As Lee grows up he realizes that everything good in life,everything he wanted is reserved for whites only. All these signs increases the struggle for existence. He was a ''boy'' for the whites  in the market,that  is where he meets Red Head who is a nice woman. He later got a job,in a hotel, that almost smacked life out of him,so he stops. He later meets Jim who helps him with a job in Bantu's library. Jim gives him a peep into the world of''passes''. The world around him is controlled by passes-passes of treks,identification,travelling e.t.c. But the actual reason for the passes is restriction,restriction to the movement of Blacks.
          His years at the Bantu's men social center helps to baptize him into a world of literature and activism. He begins to write and this leads to the inspiration and urge to write about the suffering of the people. He traveles out to England and discovered that suffering and racial discrimination doesn't occur. He has to write,he has seen life outside racism,so he needs to tell freedom.