Time and history in the novels of J.M. Coetzee

Many pairs of opposites appear as motifs in the novels of J. M. Coetzee, most serving to display the ill-defined borders and ambiguous relationships which exist between opposed forces. Only the forces of historic time and cyclic time are clearly separate and irreconcilable. Through the examples afforded by his characters, Coetzee demonstrates the eternally opposed natures of these two separate types of time as well as his preference for the natural, cyclic mode of existence.

Coetzee's characters can be relegated into roughly three categories of chronal existence: those who inhabit the natural, cyclic sphere, living according to the cycles of the seasons; those who inhabit the distorted, catastrophic, history-making mode; and most interesting, those who are aware of both types of existence, inhabiting one but desiring the other. The characters existing in cyclic time are primarily the childlike and animalistic, unaware of history, living according to natural life cycles away from the confines of civilization. Michael K is the best example of this type of character in his reduction of his body's rhythms to that of an animal in hibernation. The characters inhabiting historic time, oppositely, drive their bodies "like a machine . . . ignorant that [they] have [their] own rhythms" (Barbarians 77). These are the history makers--the servants of empire, government, violence, war.

The remaining category of characters is the most fascinating and contains all but one of Coetzee's protagonists. These are the bichronal characters who are aware of both types of existence yet are uanble to reside fully in either. Of this group, we find one who exists primarily in a cyclic world but who longs for a historic existence (Magda in In the Heart of the Country); one who inhabits the historic world but is tempted by the cyclic one (the doctor in The Life and Times of Michael K); and one who appears to exist in a cyclic world but who is partly seduced, partly forced into the historic sphere (the magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians). Although Coetzee displays the most affinity for this class of characters, he nonetheless makes clear the despair and downfall that awaits those with knowledge of that unattainable other.

Ultimately, Coetzee finds history to be a distortion of real, cyclic time. Through his characters he demonstrates his belief that history is time on which meaning has been imposed (Penner interview), an unnatural, forced meaning rather than meaning which exists complete in itself.