They want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages I have lived in, as if I were aThey want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages I have lived in, as if I were a budgie or a white mouse or a monkey.
In the days of apartheid in Capetown, South Africa, Coetzee gives us the story of Michael K, a bullied, downtrodden young man, who finds himself in the middle of a civil war he does not understand. His mother, who is dying, wants to return to her home in Prince Albert, and Michael rigs a cart and sets out to take her there, navigating his way through checkpoints and troops without the necessary papers. The mother dies en route, but that is just the beginning of Michael’s struggles to survive in a society that makes no sense and will not allow anyone of Michael’s ilk to live a simple or happy life.
This is a story of isolation and loneliness. Michael becomes so much the secluded individual that he loses any desire or ability to co-exist with other people. The dangers are innumerable and unidentifiable. They come from both sides of the conflict, and no one is likely to be allowed to exist without choosing a side, but Michael is slow and naive, almost childlike, and he cannot even understand the dynamics of the conflict. Even the kind people he encounters befuddle him.
As we begin to wonder if any individual has purpose in such a society, Michael also grapples with what his existence means, and Coetzee asks the question in captivating prose:
Every grain of this earth will be washed clean by the rain, he told himself, and dried by the sun and scoured by the wind, before the seasons turn again. There will be not a grain left bearing my marks, just as my mother has now, after her season in the earth, been washed clean, blown about, and drawn up into the leaves of grass.
A little more than halfway through the novel, Coetzee switches from the story we have been seeing exclusively in a third person voice from Michael’s viewpoint, to a first person voice of a medical officer tasked with Michael’s care in an internment camp. It seems to me that Coetzee wished to show us the human face of the opposition and demonstrate how difficult it would be to separate the players into strictly good and evil camps. This doctor is struggling, as well, with making sense of the system he serves.
I wanted to say, “you ask why you are important Michaels. The answer is that you are not important. But that does not mean you are forgotten. No one is forgotten. Remember the sparrows. Five sparrows are sold for a farthing, and even they are not forgotten.”
I felt acutely the helplessness of Michael’s situation and the attempt at self-preservation that takes the form of self-destruction. Michael rejects any interaction with society, either those who share his position or those who claim authority over him. While we are never told that Michael is black, or for that matter that the doctor or soldiers are white, we instinctively know this to be so. Michael’s deformity that is the source of ridicule and derision, we are told, is his harelip that he has had from birth, but it is clear to me that we are meant to see that it is in truth his color, his class, his position in society that are his handicaps, and just like his physical deformity, they are not of his making or in his control. I found it interesting that more than one character in the novel asks if any attempt was ever made to correct Michael’s deformity, and when told “no”, they each remark how easily the correction could have been made.
I find it very difficult to review a book like this one. It is well-written and a rare glimpse of Africa from the viewpoint of a 19t3.5, rounded down.
I find it very difficult to review a book like this one. It is well-written and a rare glimpse of Africa from the viewpoint of a 19th century tribe before and at the onset of colonization. It has found a significant place in the literary cannon, and I feel that it is well-deserved, and yet it left me almost untouched.
Most of the ideas and customs of the tribe were too foreign for me to relate to. I cannot excuse, in my mind, the murder of twins, the mutilation of a baby because it is believed it is an evil spirit making itself born again and again, the killing of a good son because the oracle in the cave calls for it, by simply calling it tradition. I did not like Okonkwo, who seemed to me a character too flawed to be admired, nor did I sympathize in any way with the invading white men at the close of the book. I did like many of the secondary characters, but I felt them all trapped in a society that could offer them no help and no happiness.
I suppose the worst thing for me was realizing that I did not think the way of life they were losing was a great loss and yet knew that the way of life they were about to have forced upon them was no win.
I can certainly understand the importance of this novel and at no time did I feel like abandoning it, but I would not count it a favorite and I feel that I haven’t the capacity to fully appreciate it. I suppose this is just another of those that I am to remain an outlier on, since it is universally hailed as being groundbreaking. It happens sometimes. ...more
The story of Oroonoko, a prince, and his wife, Imoinda. Imoinda is a beauty and Oroonoko's grandfather, the king, wishes to have her for his own. BothThe story of Oroonoko, a prince, and his wife, Imoinda. Imoinda is a beauty and Oroonoko's grandfather, the king, wishes to have her for his own. Both Imoinda and Oroonoko are subsequently enslaved. Inspired by a trip to Surinam, Aphra Behn's view of slaves is very much of her time--a sort of mingling of the noble savage, fierce warrior myth and the born to serve myth.
I think this is worthwhile as a measure of how early the use of slave labor was recognized as being immoral in truth. Written in the 1600's there can be no doubt that Behn was bothered by the institution as it existed. There is a morbid fascination you feel while reading it. I wanted to put it aside, and yet I wanted to finish to the bitter end....more
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