THE LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K. won the Booker prize in 1983.
Life and Times of Michael K is a very interesting story that unfolds such complex themes as power paradigm, civil war, authority, voice, identity, racial ideology, and resistance. It is a story of dualism; it presents the dialectics of inner and outer worlds, of language and silence, of authority and lack of power, of complexity and simplicity. In the times of civil war, and power strife, the novel also presents such notions as simplicity, stillness, silence, and tranquility with which Michael K challenges power relations and cultural ideologies and thus transgresses beyond the set boundaries to become “ other,” different. The transgression that exceeds the predetermined performance of the world Michael K lives in, shapes his own identity and recreates his own world. This thus can be refered to Marx’s theory of German Ideology that proclaims “the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production and how individuals express their life.” Michael K’s simple life and his condition of in articulation is the “product” of the time and the existing power relations, which also ( it may sound as a paradox or ambiguity) produces Michael K’s silence as a means of expression of his life.
In the novel the use, as well as the switch of the authorial voice (by narrating the story with the third and first person perspectives) is also very interesting. A novel that tells a life story is usually expected to be presented in the first person perspective; however, the choice of the third- person perspective once again emphasizes the theme of identity and the notion of language as power. Usually, the ability to narrate about oneself identifies one’s voice and individuality and thus the narration with the first person perspective identifies the voice of the narrator. Hence, the voice that determines identity is individual’s language. As Gloria Anzaldua claims language determines, distinguishes, and recreates identity. However, in the life story of Micheal K language is his silence, which also depicts his identity.
Although silence is considered a form of subservience and is usually associated with the lack of power, silence also is a form of communication that shows an ignorant attitude and a move that switches the power from the one who talks to the silent communicator. Moreover, silence provokes questions, debates, and uncertainty, and thus, creates grounds of dominance, leaving others in the state of never-ended expectations. Hence, Michael K uses his silence as a power tool, as such means of communication through which he not only constructs his own identity but also presents his opposition toward domination and power structure. The expectations that the society imposes determine what the appropriate and accepted behaviors are. Mickael’s incomprehensibility doesn’t simply defines a powerless, voiceless black gardener, but rather shows that it is acceptable by those in authority – the police and the military who demand revealing about himself.
Moreover, I see Michael’s inability and/or rejection to talk about himself not only a resistance towards the world, power, and authority, but also his objective perception of impossible, his reference to the external world towards which there is no access. Silence thus, becomes a medium through which he experience the world and his role within the society based upon the social acceptance, authority recognition, and power hierarchy.
Not having the “access” and “place” in the world, Michael creates his own world in within himself. Therefore, the outside world being covered and inaccesable for him, Michael, too, covers his own world with his silence about his identity and thus makes his world inaccesable for the outsiders. Hence, Michael K’s silence is his language, a means to be “other”, and to cover his inner world and his identity, as well as it is the power epitome that grants him freedom, and establishes his self in within him.
By: K.Yegoryan
Works Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. “Borderlands/la Frontera.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1017-1030.
Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 654-658.
Elucidating Coetzee's World and Works 
Very interesting, Kristina! I was also struck by the power of silence in Michael’s character, which defies expectation. You are right that it is his source of power. The doctor who takes care of Michael says in the end: “Slowly, as you persistent No, day after day, gathered weight, I began to feel that you were more than just another patient” (164). Michael says almost nothing to the doctor, except the frequent “No” in refusing food. This causes the doctor to realize the beauty of Michael.
The doctor feels trapped by the war, isolated in time, and even the guard who watches the camp says that he does not enjoy his post as guard (this reminds me of the Magistrate’s guard in Waiting for the Barbarians). But Michael is not really effected by the war. He has almost no awareness that it is going on, and he doesn’t let it confine him. The doctor envies this in Michael, but the only way that he is able to make such a meaning is through Michael’s silence.
The doctor compares Michael to a lizard, a stone, an insect, etc., all things that have no language. But all of these things are free, unaffected by the going ons of the war that enslaves the doctor, the soldiers, the guards, the people in the camps, etc. By becoming a powerless object (a voiceless man) he gains autonomy. Michael is always seeking freedom, and a lot of the time he is allowed to do as he pleases because people see him a a child, harmless. But I think Michael is aware of this and takes advantage of it, like in the end when he says that people will just assume he is a beggar and leave him alone. Through giving up power he gains freedom, which in this time of war is the greatest power one can have.
I think you really hit the main point here with this discussion of silence, and you sparked a lot of thoughts about this idea for me. Thanks, Kristina!
-Holly Batty
Thanks Holly!
Language does grant power; however, at times, silence is more powerful as it frees from saying something!
I love your discussion of the way language, silence, and voice function in the novel. You are right that first person narration usually gives a character “voice,” and the paradox of Michael K (the character and the novel) is that his voice is most distinct in the loss or refusal (depending on how much agency you assign to Michael K) of voice. I was particularly excited by the way in which you bring this text into contrapuntal dialogue with Anzaldúa–it serves almost as a critique of Anzaldúa (and other texts and theories of voice and language that I take Anzaldúa to stand for in your post), in your reading. Certainly, this is a critique of Anzaldúa that I hadn’t thought of before, but that seems quite compelling now.
To further complicate matters, though, I think we need to keep in mind that the mastermind of the whole text (both first and third person narratives) is the author/J. M. Coetzee. So, in a way, Coetzee is creating K.’s voice, ventriloquizing K’s voice, if you will, even his voice as silence. Isn’t this a gesture of supreme arrogance on Coetzee’s part? (Coetzee’s gesture as a writer, after all, is never silence–though in “real life” it sometimes is). And what alternative would Coetzee have other than the equally problematic options of omitting K from the text altogether, leaving K with no “voice” at all, or having K speak in the same “voice” as the other characters?
I found your articulation of Michael K’s discovery of and encounter with “impossible” to be particularly evocative and poignant. This seems to me to be the most profoundly pessimistic facet of the novel, and also the one that most resonates with Lacan, Saussure, Derrida, and other poststructuralist theory (theory that is seen by some as impossibly paralyzing). This is not only about the impossibility of language and of desire, it seems to me, but also the impossibility of life itself. So I suppose there’s existentialism here, as well as poststructuralism!