Summary Of Playing The Enemy By John Carlin

After 27 years in prison and winning the first free election of South Africa, Nelson Mandela looked over a country divided in the middle due to the long-term policy called apartheid. Instead of using certain laws to prohibit racial discrimination, Mandela used the national rugby team, the Springboks, to unite a nation together during the 1995 World Cup, defining the odds and bringing a nation together that was separated for more than 50 years. John Carlin, the author, provides an insightful timeline of the events leading up to the triumphant World Cup win, using many literary tactics to provide the audience a novel to interpret for themselves. Using different techniques for openings, characterization, narration, and interpretation, Carlin gives

Cultural studies seek to understand culture in all its complex forms and analyze the social and political context in which culture manifests itself (Flanagan, 2018, p. 7). The reason this novel reflects cultural studies is because the novel is based on the events that happened during apartheid in South Africa, using different societal and political structures to describe the culture in this country. For instance, the sport of rugby is the game changer in society, with the culture wrapping around the love for the sport, whether it is South Africa playing or another team playing against the nation. An example of the cultural studies in the novel is the passage from the chapter “The Bitter-Enders”. Carlin explains how “Mandela understood that rugby was the opium of apartheid, the drug that dulled white South Africa to what their politicians were doing” (Carlin, 2009, p. 131). This passage explains that sport, a structure in society, was the barrier of politics in South Africa, as the white people were cheering for the South African national team while the black people were rooting against the national team. Mandela saw this segregation in sport, as many of the players on the rugby team were white and wanted to use this rugby team to create a cultural phenomenon to unite the divided