Ambivalence in J.M Coetzee’s Novel The Age of Iron.

Abstract

J. M. Coetzee has shown colonial ambivalence in his novel, The Age of Iron (1990). Ambivalent position is exposed out from the reverse presence and activity of the state. The protagonist, Mrs. Curren a woman of seventy dying of cancer narrates the story of herself in epistolary writing style to her daughter "you" in first person, central narration. While narrating her story she also narrates the prevalent, the then political scenario and she herself between two political extremes struggling to live normal life under abnormal condition with aesthetic principle and values. But she can't rise above politics and asserts her politically non-committed self. Her position is politically splite and turn-between. Through the medium of Curren, Coetzee shows how the media, knowledge, power and truth is manipulatively represented by the apartheid state. While analyzing Coetzee's representation of the character and states’ representation of truth in the narrative Age of Iron shows the vast disparity between what is claimed to do and what is done. Hence, institutionalized violence of the state to John, Bheki and other rebels taking the base of colonial discourse, ideology, binary opposition, fixity of norms and difference, vague political alignment of Mrs. Curren somewhere supporting state and rebel and somewhere criticizing them then demise of the rebel before achieving their designed goal makes the novel full of colonial ambivalent features.