Age of Iron (1990)
5 Stars out of 5
J.M. Coetzee
198 pages
J.M. Coetzee had prior to the publication of “Age of Iron”
(1990) written five novels. This South African academic had already won his
first Booker Prize in 1983 for “The Life and Times of Michael K”. Coetzee would
go on to win another Booker Prize for “Disgrace” in 1999 (the first ever to
receive two Booker prizes) and a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. The Nobel committee
commented at the time on Coetzee’s use of the “involvement of the outsider” along with his “well-crafted
composition, pregnant dialog and analytical brilliance” in his work. All of
these elements are to be found in “Age of Iron” along with Coetzee’s life-long
focus on violence as it is manifested in the imperialistic and colonialist mentality
of the Western World.
Coetzee explores his concerns about the plight of those that
cannot defend themselves via the use of allegorical techniques in many of his
novels; “Age of Iron” continues this pattern. The novel is superficially a long
letter from a dying South African white woman, Mrs. Curren to her long-departed
daughter in America. She has just learned from her doctors that her losing battle
with cancer is nearing its end. After she returns home from the doctor's office, she spots a homeless
man lying in the alley behind her house. She invites the dirty and drunken Mr.
Vercueil into her home and into her life. Initially distant in mind and
position, Mrs. Curren slowly proceeds to open herself emotionally and philosophically to Vercueil. She is a former Classics teacher, he a former
seaman. She talks incessantly (but not unwisely), he hardly at all. From a
symbolic sense, she may represent the silent, liberal wings of apartheid South
Africa (the years of this story are 1986 to 1989 – five years before the end of
Apartheid), while Vercueil may be the equally silent, but indifferent wing of that same
society. These are the guilty people of South Africa; not guilty of actively
suppressing the majority black people. No, not guilty of active suppression; they
are the ones guilty of tolerating and turning their silent gazes away and thus
allowing the system to flourish far longer than it ever should have.
Mrs. Curren employs within her household a housekeeper, Florence, Florence is a black
South African and the mother of two little girls and an adolescent boy, Bheki.
Bheki is away to school as the “Age of Iron” opens. He soon comes home with a
boy we later learn is named John. Bheki and John represent the black youth of
course, but also as the reader progresses are shown to be the “Iron” of the
book’s title. The boys are caught up in the growing violence of the times, and
will act in several ways to propel Mrs. Curren’s personal evolution. As the boys
situation becomes more dire with respect to the police, Mrs. Curren’s eyes
begin to open to the situation of the blacks with whom she “shares” her
country. That she and her white compatriots don’t really share the country has
long been known to her, but just what the whites do share with blacks is only
now becoming all too dreadfully clear to her. Yet as she still fails to
fully understand the narrowness of black South Africans' choices or the world they inhabit, she continues
to argue against the movement towards violence these two young men appear to be
making. Early in her dawning awareness of the black world her housekeeper lives
in, she asks Florence, how can she ignore the danger Bheki is in? Florence
responds “that the children are like iron, we are proud of them.” Her answer seems to be for a different question and is
completely incomprehensible to Mrs. Curren.
As the violence ramps up and Mrs. Curren continues her various
arguments with the black people she meets, she slowly begins to realize another
fact: her opinions don’t matter because she is a woman; worse, an old woman;
and most worst of all, an old white woman. The use by Coetzee of this image is
one he has commented on outside his books: the sense that the black people in
South Africa live in a land invisible to him. It is equally interesting to me
that Coetzee as a man has chosen to inhabit the mind of a woman in “Age of Iron”.
It seems another attempt by him as he tries to imagine the inner life of a
woman, another attempt to understand yet another group of the historically
disenfranchised segments of society.
Coetzee is also well known for occasionally incorporating
his own life into his allegories. His mother, a woman of German ancestry and a school
teacher might be a model for Mrs. Curren. Vercueil’s model then would presumably
be Coetzee’s Afrikaner father. Whether his father was as silent as the fictional
Vercueil is not known to me, though others have commented that Coetzee himself
is notorious for his taciturnity. Coetzee is also known to be a teetotaler and
a vegan; not good models for the alcoholic Vercueil. Whether Coetzee has
brought his family’s superficialities into this story or not is really not the
main thrust of the book Rather it is whether or not he has brought in the
attitudes and value systems of the Afrikaners he grew up with is the real point
of the book. To judge by comments made by Coetzee following the publication of
some of this other novels, it is clear he feels passionate about the plight of
those that cannot defend themselves.
Coetzee has also publically stated that "there is only one true myth, the myth
of the survivor on a desert island”. Coetzee went so far as to have one of his
characters state his desire for solitude and to stand outside history by declaring “I don’t like
accomplices. God let me be alone.” Wondering about these hermitic thoughts of Coetzee makes me really wonder at
the origins for the fervor Coetzee clearly feels for the powerless. The theme in “Age of Iron” of a
bridgeless chasm between white and black, of the world the blacks live in that
is so foreign to the whites that it seems incomprehensively alien suggests
compassion and empathy that are terribly foreign to that desert island-loving
author. Yet, go into this theme he does with “Age of Iron”, and while it seems
like a choice that is an obvious one for a South African (or American) to dig
into, there are but only a very few cases in literature that anyone has delved into it as
elegantly as Coetzee does.
J.M. Coetzee has written as of 2016 twelve novels and four
fictionalized memoirs, most including the theme of the indifferent or clueless
powerful in contrast to the powerless. He first tried his deft hand on these
topics in 1974 with “Dusklands” where he draws implied parallels between
America’s war in Viet Nam and South Africa’s actions in 18th Century Africa.
He displayed his growing artistic genius with the tale of the deformed Michael
K in 1983’s “The Life and Times of Michael K”. In each of these novels as with “Age
of Iron”, Coetzee has found a way to explore his chosen theme with new,
insightful literary techniques. While the heart of
Coetzee’s work may well lie in a concern over the helpless, the art of Coetzee’s work lies in the clever
construction and elegant language used in his writing. “Age of Iron” is an
excellent introduction to him, his themes and subject choices. I strongly
recommend it to anyone interested in the oppressed, how oppression can be
active or passive, and in stories told at a very rarefied level of subtlety in style and language.
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