“Life and Times of Michael K.” by J. M. Coetzee is a book presenting a wide range of vital problems for the whole society. Many themes are combined in the novel providing the reader with the idea of the complexity of the world.
The Civil War between unknown parties creates the background in the novel on which the fate of Michaela K. is revealed. The main character is an outcast, a physically defective man, who, after overcoming a series of sufferings and humiliation, comes to understanding the sense of life. Strong spirit helps him to live on and not give up. Michael’s life reflects the fate of the Afro-American population. Michael K. as a human of different race is not allowed to attend a school for the white, cannot be properly treated in the hospital or find a descent job. The theme of war can be understood explicitly and implicitly as well. The direct mentioning of the Civil War in the novel gives the reader a hint to realize the true essence of the story message. In his novel the author aims at emphasizing the idea that human life is an everyday war. That is the way how through the direct reference to the Civil War J. M. Coetzee reveals the implicit idea of the soul fighting.
The main character faces a lot of difficulties. In wartime, he passed a difficult way with a sick mother from Cape Town to her hometown of Prince Albert National Park. His mother died on their way. Then he happens to be kept in a labor camp, where he becomes a witness of human tortures. After escaping from the camp, Michael K. lives in a cave in the mountains. Gaining spiritual freedom, he begins to realize the sense of human life, and living as a hermit hand in hand with nature, Michael finds it to be his protector.
“He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust” (Coetzee 56). Michael understands that he is a small part of a huge world where everyone has their own rights, ambitions, aims and values. In fact, through these words the reader may understand that Michael thinks of himself as of nonentity in this world who fights against the humanity in order to prove his rights in the society. Being of different race, Michaels feels social discrimination and willingly fights for proving that he is worth being treated equally with others. Nowadays racism is a complicated phenomenon, a kind of social war that involves millions of people who want to prove their rights and gain equality in the world. This idea is perfectly highlighted in the novel and can be called as war for equal rights and equal treatment of personality.
“He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war, saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why” (Coetzee 98). Metaphorical speeches give the reader an opportunity to understand deep philosophic ideas of human existence. Michael throws down a challenge to the military machine which makes men go to the army and risk their lives. At the same time, Michael perceives the nature as the mother of the humankind and people should take care of it as of something sacred. So, he blames the military for leaving nature without care. It shows how highly Michael appreciates nature.
“Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory, if you know that word. It was an allegory – speaking at the highest level – of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it” (Coetzee 157). When Michael was in a labor camp, he became a witness of human torturing. This very cam can be implicitly treated as a cruel society that makes people suffer for various reasons. The society stands out as a system that functions according their own principles, those people who do not live in accordance with them become the victims of the human cruelty. Michael is the representative of the Afro-American race who faces hardships in adapting to a different society. The problem of racism is of great importance in the society as different races feel discomfort among people of another race and fight for equal treatment.
“It came to me with great force that I was wasting my life, that I was wasting it by living from day to day in a state of waiting that I had in effect given myself up as a prisoner to this war” (Coetzee 192). Michael believes that war imprisons a person limiting their physical and spiritual freedom. Taking into account the point that life is a constant war, one can guess that life is a prison. In such a way the author raises the idea about the contradictory nature of human existence. People fight for freedom, but the nature of a fight consists of imprisonment. It is the endless circle that proves the thought about human life being a constant war for life.
“I could live here forever, he thought, or till I die. Nothing would happen, every day would be the same as the day before, there would be nothing to say. The anxiety that belonged to the time on the road began to leave him. Sometimes, as he walked, he did not know whether he was awake or asleep. He could understand that people should have retreated here and fenced themselves in with miles and miles of silence; he could understand that they should have wanted to bequeath the privilege of so much silence to their children and grandchildren in perpetuity (though by what right he was not sure); he wondered whether there were not forgotten corners and angles and corridors between the fences, land that belonged to no one yet. Perhaps if one flew high enough, he thought, one would be able to see” (Coetzee 168). Michael looks for freedom and he realizes that he can achieve it only escaping from the society. He believes that his perfect life consists of harmonious coexistence with nature and with mother earth. The path of spiritual enlightenment and freedom is possible only through a process of creation, rather than the process of destruction. Michael K. has found its way to the truth, to his God. The process of creation in the life of Michaela K. forced him to finally form his inner spiritual world, which has become much richer. This creation, along with the knowledge of the simple truths of life enabled him to find the sense of his life.
“Let me tell you the meaning of the sacred and alluring garden that blooms in the heart of the desert and produces the food of life. The garden for which you are currently heading is nowhere and everywhere except in the camps. It is another name for the only place where you belong, Michael, where you do not feel homeless. It is off every map, no road leads to it that is merely a road, and only you know the way” (Coetzee 145). This quotation emphasizes the idea that every person tries to cultivate their own garden. That is the sense of human life that presupposes everyday war with life hardships. It implicitly means that everyone aims to create a perfect life and live happily, but the way to achieve this goal is not as easy as one may think, it demands constant gardening, in other words, a person must work hard every day overcoming difficulties in order to accomplish the aim of the perfect garden. The process of gardening enlightens the soul. Thus, Michael K. found a raison d'etre. He got food from the ground, not only material, but spiritual as well, he feels happy now. The only thing that Michael K. is afraid of concerns an invasion of civilization into his world, into his perfect garden. He is afraid of meeting new people and go back to their world.
Another interesting point concerns the attitude of the author to a human. If a person passively exists from morning till night, this person is like a stone. “He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of war. An unbearing, unborn creature” (Coetzee 139). If a person does not fight for personal freedom, they get swallowed by the war and are tossed like stones that have no ambitions, aims and willingness to achieve a better life. Taking it into account, one may easily guess that a person that does nothing in life is considered a creature or something inanimate that deserves only being a part of a military machine.
This realistic philosophical novel presents a wide range of existentialistic ideas. Besides escaping from the reality, the main character faces the problem of choice that he war makes him to do. “Yet I am convinced there are areas that lie between the camps and belong to no camp, not even to the catchment areas of the camps — certain mountaintops, for example, certain islands in the middle of swamps, certain arid strips where human beings may not find it worth their while to live. I am looking for such a place in order to settle there, perhaps only till things improve, perhaps forever. I am not so foolish, however, as to imagine that I can rely on maps and roads to guide me” (Coetzee 184). The war is a massive destructive factor that affects everyone making many people escape and look for another place to live. Someone searches for physical comfort and convenience, but the other people need spiritual balance. After a big shock of having been involved in war, many people need calmness and quiet in order to recover morally. That is why they do not consult the maps, but just follow their intuition. Michaels realizes that gardening is vocation.
In addition, Michael’s experience shows that very often in the period of global conflicts and wars, a deep understanding of the essence of human existence is the most important thing that may help to keep the balance of the society. Better than anyone Michael K. is aware of the importance of the concepts of land and garden that have a profound symbolic and allegorical meaning. He perceives the abandonment of the gardening as the murder of a human being. The war is considered the destruction of the whole system of feelings and values of every living being that that a person has developed over years. At the end of the novel Michael returns to the city and is placed in a hospital, but still he understands that he needs nothing more because he has found the sense of his existence.
The combination of the direct reference to the Civil War and the implicit background it creates in the story presents a kind of mystery for the reader. The author writes about unpleasant and ugly things, in particular, the endless murderous tortures. The main character is constantly dying of hunger, so he is forced to eat worms, cut up half-dead animals, and so on. Coetzee seems to find the precise point where cruelty is visible enough and understandable. So, in a broader sense, this book is reflects the war against human cruelty.
This novel does not reveal only the struggle between the individual and civilization. It shows more complex and profound problem, in particular, the merging of man and nature, where the human and natural begins, and those are the main questions that the author raises.
Michael is described as if his time is completely different comparing to the time when people live. And so it is. There is a concept of social time, which is a product of culture, and it is artificial. But Michael does not live in a social time because he really has his own time different from the time of the people around him. He perceives everything in a different way, in another dimension, and everything seems to him as a constant war for freedom between human and life.
This novel presents a complicated range of themes that reflect the hardship of nowadays existence as they touch upon the issues of racial divergences, military machine, existentially oriented ideas of escaping, problem of human choice, the destructive nature of war that affects the human psychology, the philosophy of freedom and other minor aspects of life that are harmoniously combined on the pages of the novel.
Works Cited:
Coetzee, John Maxwell, Life and Times of Michael K. Vintage Books, London, 2004. Web. 16
Mar. 2016.
