Life & Times of Michael K By J.M.Coetzee
(Review by Raja sir)
J.M.Coetzee,a South African born in 1940,has rewritten the the travail of Huck's insight (Major character in Mark Twain's novel), but from the black boy Jim's point of view. This time the story is set in a country which suffered indescribable pain and agony. It is the trail of a living bitter stonehearted place, where there was neither pity nor comedy.
Michael K is dull and slow, in a sense. The fatherless kid was born with a disfigurement-a harelip, and as a result he was unable to get nourishment from his mother’s breast. His plight is reflected in the scene when he needs some tools to make a kind of cart to carry his sick and dying mother to a hospital and he breaks into a locked shed to steal the things. It was the sole crime he had committed, and which remains undetected and unpunished but every moment of his life seems to be burdened with the thought that he was guilty of some huge and unrevealed crime. His sir name Kafkan presented as 'K' resounds it. Michael is sent to a state-run orphanage where afflicted children are taken care of. In that orphanage, K experiences the ultimate harsh realities of the South-African life: curfews, police permits, tyranny, patrols, guns,and the things which leave dark prints on the psyche of a child.
At the age of 15, he starts working as a gardener in a public park in Cape Town. His mother, worn but scrupulous, works as a domestic servant for a decent elderly couple in a posh residential area. Although Michael's existence is like that of a dust particle, he is in no sense a derelict. His mother has been provided an unused room in the basement of the master's house. She is totally dependant on the charity of the master and mistress.
Suddenly, the country is at war: the building is attacked, vandalized and the residents are driven out of their houses. Michael K loses his job. As Michael understands the purpose of war from a prison-master is to give minorities their dues. This is the sign of democratic idealism. But in a country like South Africa, it takes a dirty turn and the repression of the black majority by the White minority begins to shape. In the novel, however, Coetzee does not tell the readers who black and who white are, and who rules and who is ruled. Only through the names of the places like Cape Town and the physical and moral landscape do the readers realize that the story takes place in South Africa.
Michael K does not understand color and power; he only knows what is obvious and elemental. Michael only cares for the things which are divinely ordered. He does not call any thing tyranny, or ideal. He cares for his mother, the earth, and later on he will learn that they come to the same in the end.
R.Coetzee is distinctly highly inventive and a man with translucent conviction. Like in his other novel "Waiting for the Barbarians", Coetzee describes the landscapes of suffering little by little with the art of moral disclosure.His stories are universal because they can take place anywhere and to anyone. He does not use abstractions in his stories; his stories are engrossed in the minute and the concrete. Through the minute details in his stories, it is possible to learn how to sow, how to plough, how to use a pump, or how to make a house of earth. His sentences are simple, direct and pure. They are so acute that the readers get the effect deep in their minds.
The hard experiences of the life take him through many experiences. He flows with the moments. Michael does not mould with the rest of the society. He sees, thinks, experiences, and to some extent reacts within himself, but finally, it is revealed that he is unique in his existence.
Coetzee's stories have the power to keep the readers lost in the world of which,perhap, they may have never imagined.Mr.Coetzee,the Nobel Prize winning author of some memorable novels, can be said to have provided a new vein to literature , to be read,explored,understood , interpreted and enjoyed by the posterity for the ages to come.

Raja sir
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