Silence As Resistance

J. M. Coetzee, a South African writer, has written six novels and numerous critical works, and has won Britain's Booker-Mc Connell Prize twice (1983 and 1999), France's Prix Femina Etranger (1985), and the Jerusalem Prize for writing that contributes to "the freedom of the individual in society" (1987). Born in the 1940, Coetzee has witnessed the suffering and oppression of his people under the apartheid and post-apartheid regimes. He is a writer of strong humanitarian concern who views himself as having an ethical obligation to respond to the rampant injustice that characterizes his society. He works painstakingly to find out a way to represent the Oppressed, to help them combat all forms of oppression. The aim of this thesis is to interpret Coetzee's way of representing the Oppressed by analyzing the three novels which best illustrate his way of representation, i.e., how he creates the silent images of the Oppressed in his works and how he renders silence as their weapon of resistance.Following a brief introduction to the author and his works and the background of the research work is the main body of the thesis which consists of three chapters:Chapter One introduces the emergence and the development of post-colonial studies, pointing out some much-debated issues of the field. Then the concepts of the Other and the Subaltern are illustrated in details with reference to the leading opinions on the topic. After the illustration of the concept of the Oppressed, the issue of representation, especially the issue of representing the Other and the Subaltern, is presented, together with an interpretation of Coetzee's way of representing the Oppressed.Chapter Two presents the silent images of the Oppressed in Coetzee's three novels: the tongue-cut Friday in Foe who is oppressed by Cruso and Susan's mastery, the imposition of language that Susan and Foe try to impose on him; the harelip Michael K in Life and Times of Michael K, who is threatened by various forms of oppression: the brutality of the State Machine; the imprisonment of the labor camp and the rehabilitation camp; and the Medical Officer's attempt to speak for him, to...