Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside <i>In the Heart of the Country</i>

DONG Liang

Volume 2 Issue 3

Mar. 2021

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DONG Liang. Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(3): 477-491.

Citation:

DONG Liang. Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(3): 477-491.

DONG Liang. Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(3): 477-491.

Citation:

DONG Liang. Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(3): 477-491.

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Nowhere is Home： J. M. Coetzee’s Wrestling with Home Inside/Outside In the Heart of the Country

DONG Liang

Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics

Received Date: 2019-01-02
Publish Date: 2021-03-09

Abstract

Abstract

By emphasizing and analyzing the frequent appearance of the term nowhere in J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, I demonstrate the close correspondence between Coetzee’s unsettlement in South Africa in the 1970s and Magda, the female protagonist in In the Heart of the Country who fails to pursue an idealistic home on a remote farm. Coetzee’s authorship, or specifically speaking, his paradoxical feeling about South Africa, embodies itself in hostile coexistence with the rigorous censorship regime in South Africa and in his involvement in Afrikaner culture during this period. By choosing an anti-pastoral genre in an antirealistic narrative, Coetzee depicts a miserable picture of Magda’s struggle with her patriarchal father, rebellious coloured servants as well as her own identity crisis. The cruel answer for Magda is that nowhere could be the very place to accommodate the ethical values in her mind, though she attempts to subvert the patriarchal authority and seek reciprocity with the coloured servants. Magda’s tragedy provides us with an opportunity to explore the historical and ethical dimensions of the narrative and, beyond that, Coetzee’s wrestling with the issue of home.
- J. M. Coetzee,
- hostile coexistence,
- anti-pastoral genre,
- nowhere

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References(36)

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