Exploring patterns of violence in J. M. coetzee’s fiction

The aim of this research paper is to explore patterns of violence in J. M. Coetzee’s fiction particularly with reference to his four major novels Summertime (2009), The Slow Man (2005), Age of Iron (1990) and Foe (1986). As a representative of the post-colonial Afro American psyche, his fiction documents the multiple facets to socio-political, ethno-racial, and linguistic violence. The objective is to discern the textual representation of cruelties and their response; also to critique the role of the perpetrators of violence. The emerging patterns will be analyzed against theories of discourse, culture and psycho analysis. Research findings endorse the fact that violence gets perpetrated through active and passive agents who not merely depict the historical reality but also the experiential evolution of individuals, communities and institutions. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, educated in the U.S as a computer scientist and linguist, J.M Coetzee brings his searing insight and masterful control of language to reflect on “the new kind of negative in which we begin to see what used to lie outside the frame, occulted” (Age of Iron, 1990. pg: 112). As a representative narrator of the new consciousness, Coetzee’s works attempt to document not-soevident patterns of violence.