Jan 29, 2004 09:07 AM
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(Updated Jan 29, 2004 09:09 AM)
Meet Michael K, a 30 year something with a harelip, with shortened intelligence and goes about his daily life as a gardener. He doesn’t expect much from life or society and doesn’t understand very basic things in life. Yet his heart desires freedom and the freedom of having a lived a free life; free not from the war, but from his soul.
Witness South Africa raging in a civil war. Not many places to actually live. Loot, arson and war camps are the order of the day. You are captured and put into war camps because you want to live. You want to see the end of war; not by putting an end to it, but by staying away from it.
Experience the pathos of the doctor trying to understand his patient. He yearns to know the story behind Michael’s resistance. In understanding Michael, he understands himself – that in a vestibule of life, Michael K, the nameless soul is freer than himself. Sympathize the plight of an individual who has chosen to live a life of service to humanity and yet without freedom.
J. M. Coetzee novel in 180 pages speaks more like a volume and an epic saga of one man’s quest of freedom. That a mere 180 pages is all it took for Coetzee to pen something so brilliant is an indication of how good this author really is. Twice booker winner (one for this one and other for Disgrace), one quite understands that he deserved them more than anyone else.
Coetzee spans across an epic of a country torn by war and the indulgence of one man’s quest for a free life. Michael K doesn’t understand much of this world – rather he is one of the stupidest persons to come upon on earth; yet in Michael we see that a simple idea of life is worth living a life for.
Michael teaches us that by removing ourselves from the complexities of life and looking at the bare simplistic demands of life, what one yearns for is freedom. The freedom to be free from the soul; that a free life in a bonded society is probably not worth it; that a man bonded in his soul is not quite free. And that if one tried to look beyond the wall - it was not very hard living that life.
Bombs may have cracked and fell that water pump, but Michael derives pleasure in finding water at the end of the bore in the ground. In his pleasure of finding enough water in a spoon he displays his thoughts of deriving a better life even in the times of hatred. That looking further, it was the water contained in spoon that mattered, not the war ravaged surroundings to make man happy.
Coetzee writes with supreme élan – The language flows beautifully in the book; there are no overtly complicated prose nor is there over done third person. Note the change in stance and perspective in different parts of books – at one time a third person narrates Michael K, at others a doctor’s perspective takes the story forward, and then yet again Michael himself takes himself ahead – all blended in an intricate manner.
As with most Coetzee books, this one too broaches upon darker aspects of life. A pretty disturbing book like Disgrace on the outset, but leaves the reader to delve upon the deeper meanings of the book. And like Disgrace, the moral of the story is clear at the end.
In a teasing style, Michael K himself discovers the moral of his story. I refrain, please read this magnificent book. Simply not to be missed.
”Its difficult being kind to a person who wants nothing in life…”
-- Excerpt from the book
