The Puzzle And The Quest In Self-expression

John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-) is one of the most famous authors in the contemporary South Africa, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in2003. Coetzee is proficient in novel techniques, skillful in both form and applications of realism, modernism and post modernism, with rich thought and courage in exploration. Not only fascinated by the winding plots, the readers are also attracted by the profound mind and the different statements of Coetzee’s novels.The objects of this thesis are three autobiographical novels of Coetzee, they are Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II,and Summertime. Taking the autobiographical mode as an illustration, the analysis will be on the basis of the post-colonial cultural, the character’s process in growth, and the construction of the discourse right to analyze Coetzee’s features of autobiographical novels. The cultural sign of post-colonial background, and marginal features of the colonial life experience in his growth, these two factors affect Coetzee’s reconstruction of discourse right system in both family and society.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is divided into four chapters. Taking Boyhood as an illustration, Chapter One summarizes the marginal living its effect in the personality of the hero, John, who was in South Africa as a little boy, and its effect in his personality. The Voelfontein, a farm in South Africa, and Johannesburg, the capital, were two important living areas in John’s childhood:one represented the colonial history of South Africa, and the other was the representation of colonial descendants’present life. At this stage, John and his family lived a marginal life both culturally and politically because their English cultural identification and the political tendency was not accepted by the Afrikaaner. So the cultural feature of John’s family is called the External-other. From the perspective of a child, his confusion was caused by the double marginal positions in culture and politics.Chapter Two focuses on Youth to show John’s teenage growth and analyzes the reasons that made him feel depressed in spirit. After leaving South Africa, he reached London, the centre of the colonial empire, where the teenage boy tried to achieve his dream in cultural identification. However, he still could not get rid of the South Africa, and he refused to face the reality. In fact, the colonial descendant identity did not help John open the gate of European culture, eventually he had to admit his failure of European culture exploration. Actually, John couldn’t get rid of the borderline of the culture though he had successfully got into the European region, so his cultural feature is called the Internal-other.The third chapter studies the autobiographical and biographical writing in Summertime, and Coetzee’s transformation between self-expression and his real-self-expression. After several countries’diasporic living, Coetzee returned to South Africa as an academician. During the diaspora, his imagination of hometown became reality, he also had experienced the alienation of people and things. The knowledge of himself is based on the profound introspection on his own consciousness, and it also brings the autobiography characteristics; the predicament in self-expression causes alienated temperament, and thus there is a biographical writing. Based on these reasons, Coetzee has his further exploration of reality and fiction between other-expression and self-expression.Chapter Four is a comprehensive summary in macro perspective, where Coetzee encountered predicament during his exploration in self-expression. He explored from the outside to the inside, instead of objective autobiography, which was called as an internal reflection. In this process, the external representation is taken by the autobiographical way, while the subjective internal self-examination uses the other state. The introspective significance lies on the spiritual sublimation to the the traditional Bildungsroman. In addition, Coetzee studies more in-depth of the self expression-skills, and discusses the family and intellectuals’ reconstruction of discourse right system.In the end, Coetzee’s sense of constant introspection of his autobiographical novels causes the exploration between self and real self, the author uses the text self and the real self for an effective self-expression. The writer’s consciousness of introspection is a traditional social responsibility, held by intellectuals for ages, which also has special features of post-colonial culture. Therefore, Coetzee’s exploration in his texts has profound significance.