As the title indicates, Michael K is the
protagonist of the short novel. This is the story of a heroic anonymity. The
story is set in the 1960’s South Africa , at a time when the country was
totally ripped apart by a civil war emanating from political hegemony of the
Whites. Therefore, the readers of this
book are allowed to have an access to the inner self of Michael K, at the same
time they can have a glimpse of the social and political condition of the then
South Africa.
As the story of
the novel unfolds, we are gradually made aware that the protagonist is a “dull”
person. He is “not quick”. Even nature is not merciful to him: he was born
fatherless, and with a physical disability which prevented him from growing up
as a normal child. So, from the start, he was doomed to bear an ill fate.
The portrait of
Michael K is a naïve one. He is a simpleton and the obscurest of the obscure.
He seems to be a mote in the dust heap of suwety, but he is no derelict. His
naïve portrait is the main resource of Coetzee’s narrative.
He starts his
career as an honest and devoted public gardener in Dewaal Park
in Cape Town.
His mother Anna K works as a housemaid in a rich man’s house in Cape Town. Both of them
lead a simple but honorable life just before the Civil War breaks. As his
mother’s house is attacked and vandalized, the readers know that the country is
at war, and K becomes one of many trapped in the war.
From the first
to the last, Michael K remains an extreme individualist. He does not approve
the war nor does he denounce the war. He is identified with neither rulers nor
rebels. He remains a complete outsider in times of the civil unrest. His heart
only knows what is obvious and elemental.
He is not a protester
against social injustice and oppression. He is an unheroic hero. He never
utters such high words as ‘justice’, “ideal” what he cares for is only his
mother as well as the earth. At the end of the novel, in his realization,
mother and earth will be the same entity.
His deep
responsibility and care for his ailing mother is beyond description. After the
war starts, his mother makes a wish that she wants to return to her birth
place, a farmhouse in Prince Albert.
Then K sets out on a long and laborious journey along mother. The greater part
of the book covers the minute description of the journey. On the way, they
confront danger, rain and severe cold. As it is wartime, they also face
military convoys’ interrogation and other forms of torture.
On the road, his
mother’s condition worsens and the so surrenders her to a nearby hospital. In
the hospital, she dies without consultation with him. She is cremated and K is
given a small bundle of ashes in a plastic bag. Now K’s responsibility becomes
the burial of the ashes in his mother’s dream, land in Prince Albert. At long last, he gets to the
desired place and buries his mother’s ashes.
K’s relationship
with his mother and soil is crucial to the understanding of the novel. He is a
naïve who is more than anyone biologically connected to mother and soil. As the
soil provides him with his foods, he becomes grateful to it.
K is a genuine
human being who is capable of human love and tenderness. He sees the grown up
vegetables as his siblings. This humanity is in sharp contrast o the cruelty of
the artificial civilization. The violence and atrocity of the war can not taint
his inner intregity and genuine love.
K’s character
itself is a criticism- of war and destruction. He wonders with a wise naivety why
people carry guns when it’s easier for them to grow plants and vegetables.
He becomes a
successful farmer in his mother’s abandoned farm growing melons and pumpkins.
Really, for the first time in his life, he gets a temporal bliss. Here, “he was
neither a prisoner nor a castaway …….he was himself.”
Later, K flees
the farmhouse and he is picked up as a parasite and confined to a work camp. His previous idyllic life shatters with the
advent of this stage. His later life is a parable of starvation. He can neither
eat nor can
Later, K flees
the farmhouse and he is picked up as a parasite and confined to a work camp.
His previous idyllic life shatters with the advent of this stage. His later
life is a parable of starvation. He can neither eat nor can he swallow. Injustice
is vomited out. He is not to be fed because he only “eats the bread of freed.”
