A Study Of John Maxwell Coetzee’s Three Novels:the Silent Subversion And Resistance

John Maxwell Coetzee is a famous white South African novelist and a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in2003. Based on his own complex social and cultural background, Coetzee reveals the complex ethnic problems in South Africa, the moral dilemmas in contemporary society, and the memories of trauma left over upon the ones in the post-colonial era through a series of art techniques as the perspective of post-colonialism and the strategy of silence. Coetzee’s literary works are very distinctive, which is firstly reflected in his focus on those vulnerable people, such as women, the marginalized and the persons in lower social status; secondly, he often puts his characters in his works in a very complicated situation, and characterized them as vulnerable as they are unable to grasp their own destiny; thirdly, the characters in Coetzee’s works are often bestowed such features of "silence" as a way to show their resistance and subversion to power and authority. The thesis will mainly adopt the method of textual analysis and the method of hermeneutics combined with theories in literature, sociology and psychology to make an in-depth analysis of the silent images of Coetzee’s three representative works:Life and Times of Michael K, Foe and Disgrace, so as to probe into Coetzee’s narrative strategy of silence and to have a better understanding of his works.The thesis is mainly divided into five parts. The thesis starts from the introduction to Coetzee’s life and works with a review of the influence of Coetzee’s life experiences in his writing. Coetzee’s English family education background and his complex immigrant experiences exhibit his lack of a sense of belonging to the mainstream and his marginalized living condition as the "Other", therefore Coetzee has been committed to looking for his spiritual hometown. In literary creation, Coetzee insists on depicting the world as an outsider from the perspective of postmodern context, and to use the style of fable to write creatively, thus achieving success. Through a series of descriptions to the distinctive characters, Coetzee expresses his thinking and reflections on some hot topics in the field of literature such as civilization, humanity, justice, and social ethics. In addition to that, the thesis reviews a series of theories in its main body. In this part, the thesis describes "otherness" and "discourse theory" in postmodern context and regards the description as the starting point of further study and explains the silent images in Coetzee’s novels.The first chapter is the analysis and review of Coetzee’s silence as a narrative strategy. The part expounds the concept of silence in the post-colonial context, and the origin of Coetzee’s consciousness of silence in the Western death philosophy. In addition, the part points out that the functions of Coetzee’s narrative strategy of silence are embodied in the text construction and the expressing of the themes.The second chapter is an in-depth analysis of the silent images under Coetzee’s narrative strategy of the silence, including Michael K, Friday and Lucy. In the discussion of the three novels, the author aims to point out that the "silence" of the characters exhibited in the novels not only includes the utterances of verbal speechless, but also the resistance, and some silent actions. However this silence does not mean negative or cowardice, but rather a kind of weapon adopted to fight against the reality, power, and authority, showing their wishes of longing for freedom and equality.The third chapter is a concrete analysis of the struggles and challenges of the silent characters as "the Other". This chapter is divided into three sections, which reveals that Coetzee’s silence is not just a synonym of negative acts, nor a way of showing cowardice and compromise. The concrete analysis shows that through different ways of silence the silencers transmit some similar information that silence is a distinctive way of living, a silent subversion to authority, and a weapon resisting the oppressions ineffectually. The fourth chapter points out the significance of silence as a way of silent and ineffective subversion and resistance. First, the silence is a powerful weapon to combat modern social survival rule and. Second, however silence is an act of escape, but it can arouse the sympathy of readers for "the Other" in the post-colonial context whose discourse right were deprived by the governor. Third, silence is an envisage of history. The blood and culture fusion between different races eliminate the contradiction between every tribe, realize the equality of human rights, promote the social development.At last the thesis points out that Coetzee’s silent strategies break away from the previous narrative traditions and designs a way of silent struggle against the racial discriminations and the adversity of survival for the characters in those three works. The significance of this silent strategy is to reflect the spiritual conditions of the African people in the era of post-colonialism, so as to call on more people to pay attention to such kind of social phenomenon.