Narratives of Aging and the Care Home in South Africa: Insights from Antjie Krog’s Blood’s Inner Rhyme (2025)

Aging provides a chronicle of experiences and an opportunity to elaborate on the meaning of life and its course. In Blood’s Inner Rhyme (2025), Krog walks the readers through the realities of aging and sheds light on the emotional realm of it, showcasing the interplay between human relations, solitude, and the cumulative impact of the past in the care home. I examine these issues in the context of dementia, approaching the memories that impacted on Krog’s ability to navigate Serfontein’s characterization in later life. My analysis also includes an overview of their lives as a way of constructing meaning out of the patterns that we individuals perceive with the passage of time. Additionally, I seek to prove that humanities-based inquiries are instrumental in exploring the complexities of aging, identity and personal realization that emerge in the care home, thus reflecting on the whimsical nature of memory. To this end, I utilize the theoretical frameworks of life writing, aging studies and medical humanities.