Michael K. By J.M. Coetzee

¶ … Michael K. By J.M. Coetzee tells the story of an unattractive and unintelligent young man who showcases the power of the human spirit and need for freedom, despite tremendous setbacks. Despite its depressing subject and tone, in the end, Coetzee's book is a deeply inspiring reinforcement of the power of the human spirit. On a personal level, the Life and Times of Michael K. was deeply inspiring insight into the essential human need for freedom. The first line in the book immediately sets up Michael K.

As someone who is both unusual and who will face some difficult challenges in his life. Writes Coetzee, "The first thing the midwife noticed about Michael K. when she helped him out of his mother into the world was that he had a hare lip." The hare lip immediately identifies Michael K. As a person who fate as identified as unfortunate, and for whom life will undoubtedly be difficult. As the book continues, Michael K. grows into a physically unattractive young man who has difficulty finding and keeping a job.

As time goes on, Michael K. grows up in a South Africa that is suffering under the strain of civil unrest. Michael takes his mother on a journey toward a more peaceful life in her countryside childhood home. However, on the way, she dies, and wherever Michael travels, civil unrest follows as well. Michael is eventually identified as a collaborator with the rural guerillas, and imprisoned. In jail, Michael responds to imprisonment by starting a fast.

The fast initially makes his captors angry and confused, but they grow to be awed by Michael's determination. Eventually, his inability to bear his confinement leads him to escape and try to life a life with dignity. Throughout his actions in the book, Michael K. is revealed to be a man who is determined to live his life with dignity and on his own terms. The arbitrariness and absurdity of the war around him makes this difficult, but Michael K.

continues to struggle to create a meaning and purpose for his life amidst the chaos. In the book, Michael K. strives to insulate himself from the despair of the war that rages around him in a South Africa that is ravaged by apartheid. Eventually, he succeeds in distancing himself from the unpleasantness of the world around him, and even from the terrors and absurdity of war. Through the story of Michael K, Coetzee is deeply successful in creating a clear and succinct comment against the arbitrariness and absurdity of war.

His vision of South Africa is that of a nation that is in the grip of a civil unrest that makes prisoners of both black and white. Michael K. shows both the futility and beauty of the human struggle to find meaning amidst this chaos. To me, one of the most powerful messages of the book is the active opposition to the war that Michael K. eventually embarks upon. Even though Michael K.

is physically unattractive, not highly intelligent, and not blessed with worldly goods, he emerges as a kind of hero in the book. Even though he has limited means of opposition to the sweeping power of the war and chaos about him, Michael K. still manages to become a clear symbol of resistance to war and personal choice. Life and Times of Michael K. also carries a clear message about the importance of a central, spiritual life in human existence.

While the events of Michael K's life lead him to flee unrest, and eventually to prison, these events are in a way secondary to the importance of his spiritual interior world. Coetzee's novel is essentially a life-affirming look at the importance of internal dignity and spirituality in the face of the arbitrary and sometimes cruel nature of the world around us. While Life and Times of Michael K. carries a clear and powerful message, it is also a difficult book to read at times.

Overall, the book is depressing and unhappy in its tone and content. Even Michael's triumph over external forces is greatly limited, as the freedom that he manages to gain is dangerously fragile and incomplete. Overall, the book is bleak and despairing, as Coetzee clearly outlines the limited choices available to someone like Michael K. In an unforgiving world. Coetzee's writing style is clear, effective, and unambiguous. He paints a clear and often merciless picture of the pitiful of the lives of Michael and his mother.

He writes of Michael's mother, "Her nights among the dying in the corridors of Somerset Hospital had brought it home to her how.