Life & Times of Michael K is a 1983 novel by South African-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2003. The book itself won the Booker Prize for 1983. The novel is a story of hare lipped, simple gardener Michael K, who makes an arduous journey fromcivil war-ridden urban South Africa to his mother's rural birthplace, during an imagined near-future within the apartheid era.
Plot Summary
The novel is split into three parts.
The novel begins with Michael K, an institutionalized simpleton who works as a gardener in Cape Town, South Africa. Michael tends to his mother who works as a maid to a wealthy family. Eventually, the city breaks out in a massive warlike riot, and Michael’s mother becomes very sick. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace of Prince Albert .
Michael finds himself unable to obtain the proper permits for travel out of the city so he builds a shoddy rickshaw to carry his mother, and they go on their way. Soon after escaping, Michael’s mother dies in a hospital. He lingers for some time, carrying his mother’s ashes around with him in a box. Finally, Michael decides to continue on his journey to Prince Albert to deliver his mother’s ashes. Along the way, though, he is detained for not having the required travel papers, thus being assigned to work detail on a train.
After his job on the train is finished, Michael makes his way to the farm his mother spoke of on Prince Albert. The farm is abandoned and desolate. Soon, Michael discovers how to live off the land. However, when one of the relatives of the real owners of the farm arrives, he treats Michael like a servant. Michael dislikes this treatment so he escapes up into the mountains.
In the mountains, Michael goes through a period of starvation while he becomes aware of his surroundings. In his malnourished state he finds his way down to a town where he is picked up by the police and is sent to work on a work camp. Here, Michael meets a man named Robert. Robert explains that the workers in the camp are exploited for cheap labor by the townspeople. Eventually, there is an attack on Prince Albert and the workers of the camp are blamed. The local police captain takes over and Michael escapes.
Michael finds his way back to the farm but soon feels claustrophobic within the house. Therefore, he builds a shelter in the open where he is able to watch his garden. Rebels come out of the mountains and use his garden. Although Michael is angered by this he stays in hiding. Michael becomes malnourished and delirious again because he has not come out of hiding. He is found by some soldiers and is taken to a rehabilitation camp in Cape Town.
At the rehabilitation camp, a doctor becomes interested in Michael. He finds Michael’s simple nature extremely fascinating and finds him to be unfairly accused of aiding rebels. Michael becomes very sick and delirious because he refuses to eat. The doctor tries to understand Michael’s stubborn ways while attempting to get Michael released. However, Michael escapes on his own.
Upon his escape, Michael meets with a group of nomadic people who feed him and nourish him back to health. Also during this section he meets a women who has sex with him, later we see him attracted to women for the first time. Ironically, he returns to the apartment where he and his mother lived in Cape Town, the same apartment and city he had tried to escape some time ago. Michael reflects on the garden he made in Prince Albert.
Some commentators notice a connection between the character Michael K and the protagonist Josef K. in The Trial by Franz Kafka. The book also bears many references to Kafka, and it is believed, "K" is a tribute to Kafka.
Major Character Analysis
Michael K (K)
A simple man born in South Africa, K bears the deformity of a hare lip. K’s central role is underscored by his appearance—he is deformed and because of this, people look down upon him. His mother, the police, and Visagie’s grandson all treat him with respect of a lesser human on the basis that he looks and acts slow. This is shown by the fact that K’s mother institutionalizes him until she needs him, the police let him wander around unnoticed because he has a childish innocence, and Visagie’s grandson treats him as a common servant.
But K is also dedicated to being true to his beliefs. When K’s mother becomes very ill, he dedicates his life to taking her home at whatever the cost. And when she dies along the way, K continues to show his dedication by carrying her ashes all the way to Prince Albert so she can finally be home.
When K is institutionalized he becomes a gardener, where he learns to enjoy isolation and the freedom it grants him. We see K’s isolation and freedom continue throughout the book, starting at the Visagie’s house where he first begins to learn to live off the land. But when his freedom is encroached on, this makes K flee even further from society towards the freewill and seclusion he seeks. In the mountains is able to understand how he wants to live his life, which involves only eating food he has grown from the Earth. With K’s return to Cape Town, he returns to his mother’s old apartment and ends with his thoughts of farming and longing for freedom.
Anna K
Michael K’s mother has disliked him since she saw his disfigurement. Anna put K into a government institution and ignored him until she had no one else to turn to because of her health. She is a very cruel mother, but K shows his unconditional love for her by taking care of her until her death. Anna lived her life in fear: fear of losing her job, getting sick, or being put out on the street. Her uncaring nature toward a son she does not love blinds her to the sacrifice K makes to accomplish her dream of returning to Prince Albert.
The Doctor
The infirmary doctor at the rehabilitation camp is responsible for taking care of K when he is brought in. The doctor was the only one of the staff at the hospital to realize K is an innocent civilian, being unfairly treated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The doctor becomes obsessed with K and his childish nature and his reasons for not eating.
The doctor originally thinks K wants to kill himself—hence his reason for not eating—but he comes to understand that K does want to live, just on his own terms. After K’s escape, the doctor realizes that because the camp is becoming under more strict military control, he is envious of K’s freedom. K changes the doctor’s outlook on life: the doctor fantasizes about following K and begging K to let him live like him.
Themes
Value of Human Life
Michael K is often seen as a parasite, or unskilled worker throughout this book. He doesn’t have a very high social status and he is aware of that. At times he purposely acts dumb,like not speaking, because he knows he can get away with it. However, Michael knows that he still has a purpose in this world but it takes him the whole book to discover what that purpose is. He spends his time living off the land one day at a time. He doesn't realize until later that he was born to be a gardener. The goal of his journey is not to find his purpose but to assist his mother and fulfill her wishes. That is what he believed his original purpose in life is. Michael happened to stumble upon his gardening skills by doing what he had to for survival. He loves his life as a gardener and realizes that most other people wouldn’t be able to survive as he did. There are times where he questions his love for gardening when others tell him that he should be a fencer, just as everyone questions if they’re making the right choice. He believes that,"A man must live so that he leaves no trace of his living." Becoming a gardener is Michael’s best bet for living out his philosophy.
Time
In the conclusion, Michael states that the moral of his story is “that there is enough time for everything.” The concept of time is present throughout the whole novel. Michael K goes on his life journey being grateful for each day. This idea is represented in the metaphor used in the last paragraph of the book. “[H]e would lower [the spoon] down the shaft deep into the earth, and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.” He is alluding to the idea of taking one step (sip) at a time and enjoying each day fully. He seems to have time for everything, though ironically, he doesn’t take the time to do much other than garden or help his mother. That is his choice, however. This ties into the idea that everyone has choices in life, and if they were to choose to, they would have time for everything.
World Order
It is unknown in exactly what time period this novel is set but what Coetzee does tell his readers is that it takes place in South Africa during a war. Often times throughout K’s journey, he is stopped by officers who threaten to shoot him or who take his belongings. Also, more than once he is taken into a “camp” that vaguely resembles a concentration camp. There, they are given food but K denies it. He grows weaker and weaker until he finally escapes. Later on he is taken to a hospital instead because he is too weak to work. There he refuses food as well. This refusal of food represents K’s opposition to the war and to higher order. He doesn’t like taking direction from anyone and feels that the war doesn't have much affect on his life, just an event that is getting in the way of how he wants to live.
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