Racial Confusion And Restoring Convergence

John Maxwell Coetzee, an English writer of South Africa and the Nobel Prize Laureate in2003, is one of the most influential novelists of the20thand21stcentury, whose name needsno introduction within literary circles. Up to now, he has composed14terrific novels andpresents various writing styles in each works. Coetzee’s works actively probes into both ofhuman society and literature creation itself. The allegorical fictions with obvious features ofCoetzee pay profound attention to the society of human beings, human civilization, humanity,fairness and justice, ethnic and other problems which are all involved in literature that hasbeen studied in various perspectives like narratology, psychoanalysis, cultural study, textualanalysis, even ideology. But the thematic study of Coetzee’s novels is not systematicallystudied.Disgrace, In the heart of the country, and Waiting for Barbarians are the three textualobjects mainly studied in this thesis. Racial problems in South Africa and J. M. Coetzee’sracial tendency are the primary target of this study. Taking the term “other” in thepost-colonial criticism as the entry point, this thesis focus on the writing background, thesetting description, the plot of story, and other aspects of Coetzee’s novels to explore themanifestation of the patterns and contents of the racial issues. Meanwhile, through the textualanalysis, the concept of race and the viewpoint of racial issues are reflected by Coetzee’sworks. Textual analysis and the writing background analysis are the major methods utilized inthis thesis. J.M. Coetzee’s creation period is the transitional time between the white-minorityruled system and the Black ruled one, when the whites are in power, the tribulation of theblacks’ life and the racial confusion. While the blacks get the power, there is a great challengeto the whites to live on in this land. As one of the white in South Africa, Coetzee totallyempathizes with other whites who live in the changing land. Coetzee’s works not only revealsthe ups and downs of individuals but also probe into the ideal living condition of a nation, acountry, even the people as whole. J. M. Coetzee’s creating elevation and his awareness ofunexpected future are both presented in his works.This thesis consists of4chapters in total. The introduction provides a general summary ofthe commentaries of J.M.Coetzee himself, his creation career and the achievements of the studies about the racial issues on Coetzee’s works and other studies under the postcolonialcriticism. This part offers the account for the thesis and the significance of the involvedsubject that Coetzee’s study on the racial themes under the postcolonial criticism is notsystematized and fully explored. There are two sections in chapter two. Section one mainlyanalyzes the presentation of racial confusion in South Africa through the method of thewriting background analysis. Based on the Other theory, the thesis presents the missingidentity of the confusing whites as individuals and the stranded circumstances of the decadentcolonists as a whole. The otherized and marginalized life status of the whites is the majorobject what is fully explored. Section two focuses on the causality of racial confusion inCoetzee’s texts. The first one is the mutual arrogation occurred in the transitional period ofSouth Africa between various opposites including the white and the black, the urban area andthe countryside, even teacher and student, father and daughter etc. The arrogation andanti-arrogation happened to different powers of the society provokes acute racial confusion.The second cause is the alienation and insanity occurred in variant intercourse among thedifferent powers of SouthAfrica.Chapter three gives an exact study on Coetzee’s racial views from both the ideologicaltrend and practical action of the characters in the works of Coetzee. The introspection of theonce-pride whites to the Empire and its tyranny and the penitents’ redemption to theirforefathers shows Coetzee’s tendency of convergence and also some significant experiment ofracial convergence are done in Coetzee’s artistic designing in the novels. Self-imposed exile isone of the experiments to eliminate the racial confusion. Chapter four is the conclusion andthis part briefly summarizes the significance of Coetzee’s creation and its racial themes,reveals Coetzee’s deep meditation on the racial confusion and thirst for racial convergence,and illustrates the universal meaning of the racial themes explored in Coetzee’s works. Theracial problems in Coetzee’s works are not only the problem of South Africa as a singularcountry, but also an issue beyond South Africa terrain which needs to be searched for an idealcommunity and the more harmonious society.