SOURCE: "A Storyteller without Words: J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K," in Commonwealth: Novel in English, Vol. 6, Nos. 1 and 2, Spring and Fall, 1993, pp. 121-32.

In the following essay, Hawthorne examines the meaning of Michael K's silence in Life and Times of Michael K.

While many critics have examined J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) for its intertextuality, treatment of women's issues, and use of fiction theory, few have examined his Life & Times Of Michael K. Those who have looked at this equally interesting novel have discussed Coetzee's use of myth and history or analyzed his use of starvation and his definition of the heroic or the mythic. While such studies help to clarify Coetzee's place in the development of the novel and in the development of the South African novel in particular, none has looked at what I believe is one of its central themes, the dilemma of...