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Age of Iron: The Collective Dimension of Shame and of Responsibility
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Age of Iron: The Collective Dimension of Shame and of Responsibility
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Journal Article
Age of Iron: The Collective Dimension of Shame and of Responsibility
2012
Overview
Age of Iron has received much critical attention; most interpretations of the novel revolve around themes such as trust, the silence of the victim-figures, or the fictional treatment of real, historical events. Derek Attridge, for example, discusses the question of trust and responsibility towards the other represented in the novel by Vercueil and John; Jane Poyner analyses the connection between confession and truth, on the one hand, and the historical situation Mrs Curren lives in, on the other; Michael Neill focuses on the novel's representativeness for the period of 'interregnum' in South Africa. The concept of shame as dramatised in Coetzee's work in general and in this novel in particular has received little attention. The present article is devoted to an analysis of shame in Age of Iron, shame derived from a corrupted sense of community and justice. It will look into the effects shame causes, as dramatised in the person of the protagonist of the novel. Another concern of the following discussion consists in an analysis of the imagery the narrator's discourse creates in order to designate moral wrongs, both individual and social. The novel teems with repulsive images evoked by the frequent use of references to insects or aggressive animals and birds, images that translate the narrator's ample rage against the times, her sense of helplessness and abhorrence of the injustices occurring around her. The last part of the essay offers an interpretation of the narrator's failure to burn herself and thus convert her death into a meaningful event. Rather than regarding her death as salvation facilitated by Vercueil, as Benita Parry suggests, the following reading will consider her death and the struggle preceding it as an impossibility of redemption.
