J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative By Gillian Dooley

Chapter 5 concerns his use of language and languages: the choice of tenses, the surprising flights of imagery to be found amidst the taut elegance of his narrative style, and also the multilingual sensibilities he shares with many of his characters, not excluding the nonverbal language of music.

In the next two chapters, I follow a thematic approach. The subject of sex and desire has, it seems to me, attracted less critical attention than various other themes, and, of those critics who have considered it, most seem bent on extracting allegories of sexual politics, for example from Disgrace, which are not necessarily warranted by a close examination of the texts. In chapter 6, I dispute some of these readings and suggest some other ways of considering the subject. Chapter 7 looks at another uncomfortable aspect of Coetzee's books: his treatment of the bond between parents and children. Children can be significant as either presences or absences in the novels; parents or parent figures are often rivals or oppressors. Childhood itself has many shades of meaning, in memory or imagination, and real children often fail to fulfill the roles projected by hopeful adults, despite their potency as symbols of the future.

In the last chapter, I turn my attention to the endings of Coetzee's narratives in the belief that the endings inevitably color all that comes before. My aim is to see how the choice of conclusion—time, place, point of view—contributes to the possible meanings and impressions left by each book. Many of these endings are enigmatic and resist interpretation: the end of Disgrace is particularly puzzling and has provoked some ingenious critical attempts at explication. Again, my hope is to see not what these endings signify but how they operate to project the reader's attention back to the rest of the book.

Rita Barnard warns, when discussing the final scene of Disgrace, that “it is essential that we do not, as it were, try to beat it into convenient shape with a critical shovel” (223). The temptation of wielding a critical shovel, or “of triumphantly tearing the clothes off its subject and displaying the nakedness beneath” (DP 106), is inimical to the subtleties of Coetzee's art. When I have failed to resist this temptation, I hope I have been tentative enough to be spared from accusations of violence and triumphalism.