The Life & Times Of Michael K
by J.M. Coetzee
Awards: Booker Winner 1983, Nobel Prize Winner 1983
Nominations: NY Times Finalist 1984
Date Read: July 2, 2019
Michael is a gardener. Born with a mild cleft-palate and presumed to be slow, he was raised by his single mother in a special needs environment, during a time of war and upheaval in South Africa. His entire purpose in life is to care for his mother and upon her death, his life is set adrift. Michael wanders aimlessly, wanting nothing and striving for nothing. While everyone around him wants something from him, he is wholly unable to bend himself to their will.
In his wanderings, Michael is captured by guards and set to a work crew. He meets an unnamed prisoner who reminds him, "There's nothing special about you. There's nothing special about any of us." Truer words were never spoken. I believe one of the worst illusions we have as human beings is that our lives are more important or ourselves more worthy than those right beside us.
Michael is not used to listening to his own voice, but after escaping the work camp, he is able to cultivate pumpkins at an abandoned farm, reawakening his inner voice and his instinct with the earth. As he cultivates the earth, Michael's life becomes a sanctuary from war and the needs of others, allowing him to live a life of meditative existence, focusing on the present and simply being.
Upon entering a hospital for a second time, he speaks as if in metaphor, as if the world doesn't make sense to him. And why should it? The reality he endures defies logic. Although the war rages around him, Michael is not in the war or of the war. A doctor in the camp, frustrated at his lack of will to live, slowly begins to realize that Michael is manmade. He is a creature that represents the effects of the war, made into his present state by external forces exerting their will over his being, like a rock worn smooth by the constant rush of water. The doctor finally laments, "Your stay in the Camp was merely an allegory... of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it."
I was unsure if I was going to respond to Coetzee's writing but I found so much wisdom in this book and through the life of Michael K. He is a treasured character and I look forward to the other Coetzee books on my list!
Date Read: July 2, 2019
Michael is a gardener. Born with a mild cleft-palate and presumed to be slow, he was raised by his single mother in a special needs environment, during a time of war and upheaval in South Africa. His entire purpose in life is to care for his mother and upon her death, his life is set adrift. Michael wanders aimlessly, wanting nothing and striving for nothing. While everyone around him wants something from him, he is wholly unable to bend himself to their will.
In his wanderings, Michael is captured by guards and set to a work crew. He meets an unnamed prisoner who reminds him, "There's nothing special about you. There's nothing special about any of us." Truer words were never spoken. I believe one of the worst illusions we have as human beings is that our lives are more important or ourselves more worthy than those right beside us.
Michael is not used to listening to his own voice, but after escaping the work camp, he is able to cultivate pumpkins at an abandoned farm, reawakening his inner voice and his instinct with the earth. As he cultivates the earth, Michael's life becomes a sanctuary from war and the needs of others, allowing him to live a life of meditative existence, focusing on the present and simply being.
Upon entering a hospital for a second time, he speaks as if in metaphor, as if the world doesn't make sense to him. And why should it? The reality he endures defies logic. Although the war rages around him, Michael is not in the war or of the war. A doctor in the camp, frustrated at his lack of will to live, slowly begins to realize that Michael is manmade. He is a creature that represents the effects of the war, made into his present state by external forces exerting their will over his being, like a rock worn smooth by the constant rush of water. The doctor finally laments, "Your stay in the Camp was merely an allegory... of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it."
I was unsure if I was going to respond to Coetzee's writing but I found so much wisdom in this book and through the life of Michael K. He is a treasured character and I look forward to the other Coetzee books on my list!
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