Fictionalization of South African Apartheid History in J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron

Abstract

The research entitled “Fictionalization of South African Apartheid History in John Maxwell Coetzee’s (1940)Age of Iron” (1990) examines how Coetzee’s novel fictionalizes South African Apartheid history during the late 1980s and analyzes the politics of Coetzee behind the narration of South African history.Coetzee’s novel fictionalizes South African Apartheid history as an alternative history. South Africa (1980s) depicts as an age of iron where apartheid holds the country in a tight grip and the media are controlled by the Afrikaner government to keep the people ignorant. MrsCurren, narrator refers to South Africa as the hell on the earth and tells her daughter this story to learn about the contemporary situation of South Africa. The research applies new historicism as a literary theory to examine Coetzee’s novel. It based on John Brannigan’s book of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in which he argues that new historicism as a mode of literary studies in exploring the relationship between literature and history, and in demonstrating the ideological and political interest operating through literary texts. Furthermore, itdepends on Peter Barren’s book of Beginning Theory: An Introduction of Literary and Cultural Theory in which he argues that new historicism is a method of parallel reading of literary and non-literary text with in its certain context and historical period. In short, by narrating the reality of South African Apartheid history, Coetzee attempts to build the identity of blacks and helps to establish peace as well as harmony between whites, colored and blacks.