Silence: Ethic Responsibility and the Power of the Other in Coetzee’s “Foe” and “The Life and Times of Michael K”: Part 1

I. Introduction: The Role of Silence
        At first thought, it may seem odd to consider silence as a method of practicing freedom of speech. However, upon deeper consideration, deciding to stay silent represents the choice not to exercise your speech. Although, does the same logic apply to someone who doesn’t necessary choose silence? Is there still a sense of power behind the silence of someone who simply cannot speak for themselves? These are just of few of the many questions that arise when analyzing the role of silence with Coetzee’s Friday, in Foe, and Michael, in The Life & Times of Michael K.        Questions such as these focus on whether the silence of Friday and Michael is powerful or powerless. Moreover, it is an argument teetering between whether these men remain silent by choice, or if their silence arises from a disability or inability to speak. This argument is further complicated by the fact that there is no real evidence that Friday has no tongue or visa versa. Susan never looks into his mouth and cannot truthfully verify or deny Cruso’s claim that Friday has no tongue. Similarly, as the scenes dealing with Michael’s silence come from an outsider’s prospective, the reader does not really know Michael’s thoughts and if his silence arises from a logical choice or a decaying mind.
        Although both sides provide convincing arguments, there is something more intriguing within the core of these debates that deserves equal attention. Going beyond why these characters remain silent, I will focus on how Friday’s and Michael’s silence effects those around them. Whether by choice or disability, Friday’s silence undoubtedly has a hold over Susan Barton. Similarly, whether by choice or inability, Michael’s silence demands the attention of the medical officer. Both Susan and the medical officer feel compelled to care for these silent characters that they view as helplessness in their inability to speak. They try to enable the helpless other and give their silence a voice. However, their silence resists any attempts to make it speak. The longer these characters remain silent, the more sympathy and action it arises from Susan and the medical officer.        
        Susan and the medical officer assume responsibility because they feel there is no one else to care for these disable, mutilated beings. As Mike Marais states in Disarming Silence, “it is therefore clear that, rather than simply being a “language of defeat” or the “voice of complicity,” silence may be interpreted in the novel as enabling a form of resistance that is grounded in ethical authority” (Marais 137). Susan and the medical officer act in a way they feel is ethically correct. Doing so leaves them tied to those they care for. The focus then shifts from why Friday and Michael remain silent to why their silence affects Susan and the medical officer.
        This moral obligation to care for the disabled other also aligns with what the West has come to know as the relationship between “the Orient” and “the Occident” (Said 1991). It is no coincidence that the Orients, Friday and Michael, are black others that are politically under the power of Susan and the medical officer, the white Occidents. Said describes this relationship, which he called Orientalism, in the introduction of From Orientalism as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient” (Said 1991). Therefore, through attempting to make Friday and Michael speak, Susan and the medical officer hope to understand them (Said 1991). However, more than just coming to terms with the other, Orientalism is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1992). By defining the other, Susan and the medical officer hope to fit Friday and Michael into preconceived notions as a way of dominating over them.
        Furthermore, being in a position of power and feeling superior, Susan and the medical officer feel the need to care for the less fortunate and able other. Their belief coincides with idea of “the white man’s burden” encountered in many colonial and post colonial texts. Like “the white man’s burden,” Susan and the medical officer feel obligated to understand, help, and dominate the other for the other’s own good. However, by caring for the other, Susan and the medical officer also place the other’s well-being over their own. This ties to Levinas assertion in Totality and Infinity, that “to welcome the other is to put to question my Freedom” (Levinas 85). By deciding to care for Friday and Michael, Susan and the medical officer are no longer autonomous figures, but dependent vehicles that accompany the silent other. They become defined by and operate within this relationship. That is why both eventually find the responsibility of caring for the other burdensome and restricting.
        This dependent relationship between the characters proves that there is some kind of power behind the silence of the other. It becomes clear that the white characters are affected by the black characters they are in charge of. Yet, Friday and Michael are still under the political authority of Susan and the medical officer. Therefore, the power the other possesses over the subject must be different than the one they must succumb to. Friday and Michael represent what Levinas refers to as a “the resistance which has no resistance-the ethical resistance” (Levinas 199). In this way, their power arises from morals rather than politics. This supports Marais’ assertion that silence enables “an ethical authority that is to be distinguished from political power” (Marais 132). Friday’s and Michael’s hold over Susan and the medical officer derives from the obligation and responsibility these two feel for the disabled other.
        Friday’s and Michael’s silence signifies “a relation between freedom and violence” (Marais 132). The freedom Marais refers to is the Occident’s freedom to “violate the otherness of the other, to force the unknown into “conformity” with the known” (Marais 132). However, since Friday and Michael do not speak, their truths remain mysteries. Friday and Michael maintain their otherness by remaining silent. Susan and the medical officer are obsessed with getting them to tell their stories because they wish to violate their otherness and reduce them into the known. Unable to do so and feeling sympathy for the other’s helplessness, they continue to care for them and try to get them to speak.

The following image is from the Poe's "The Cast of Amontillado." It is of a snake biting the foot of the person who steps on it. I thought it perfectly represents the relationship the others have with those who take care for them

Silence: Ethic Responsibility and the Power of the Other in Coetzee’s “Foe” and “The Life and Times of Michael K”: Part 2

II. Silent Friday: The Tongueless Other       
        While discussing the role and effect of silence in Coetzee’s novels, Friday provides one of most interesting examples. This is because of the speculation that Friday has no tongue and is forced to remain silent forever. Foe explores Friday’s permanent silence through the viewpoint of Susan Barton and analyzes how the silence affects her. Initially, the relationship between Susan and Friday does not significantly stand out prior to Susan’s knowledge of Friday’s mutilation. However, once Susan discovers that Friday “has no tongue” she is appalled and begins to look at him differently (Foe 23). Therefore, the relationship between the two changes as Susan’s perception of Friday alters.
        Susan comments on this change when she states: “Hitherto I had found Friday a shadowy creature and paid him little more attention than I would have given any house-slave in Brazil. But now I began to look at him- I could not help myself- with the horror we reserve for the mutilated” (Foe 24). Friday can no longer be identified with all the other slaves Susan has encountered. Instead, he becomes the mutilated other, a mystery that resists being conformed to common, preconceived ideas. His silence cannot support or deny any of her thoughts, leaving her unable to completely understand him. Additionally, his mutilation haunts Susan and generates pity as image of losing a tongue is too violent and upsetting to ignore.
        This change in perception also emerges from Susan’s inability to accept that Friday can never tell his story. This need to make Friday tell his story represents yet another attempt to reduce Friday to what she knows. As Levinas argues “comprehension [intelligence]-the logos of being-… [is] a way of approaching the known being such that its alterity with regard to the knowing being vanishes” (Levinas 42). Susan tries to deal with the obtrusive other “by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it … [and] ruling it” (Said 1992). However, by remaining silent, Friday “maintains his exteriority” and doing so “absolves him from the relation that Barton attempts to establish with him” (Marais 134). As long as Friday remains silence he “challenge[s]…her autonomy” as she is forced to acknowledge his singular existence (Marais 134-5). She is unable to dissolve his alterity and dominant him.
        Unsure of what to make of him, Friday’s mutilation continues to profoundly disturb Susan and creates a “tension in the novel between silence and freedom” (Marais 132). His silence, as stated before, reflects on her sense of freedom. Susan, in turn, becomes obsessed with how Friday lost his tongue, in the hopes of regaining her autonomy. Susan even questions Cruso, hoping to hear the story she cannot hear from Friday. However, Cruso claims Friday was tongueless when he met him. Nevertheless, Cruso does try to provide Susan an answer, and suggests that Slave owners perhaps cut out his tongue because “they wanted to prevent him from ever telling his story” (Foe 23). This answer does not satisfy Susan and further frustrates her. Susan cannot fathom why anyone would purposely commit such a cruel act.
        Unable to get the answers she craves, Susan is left questioning, “How will we ever know the truth?” (Foe 23). This attempt to discover the truth represents Susan’s desire to expel the feeling of pity and responsibility by getting rid of Friday’s alterity. The truth she seeks isn’t an actual truth, but evidence that supports the truth she creates about him. Her need to relieve pity is clearly seen in her weighing the possibility that Friday’s own people cut out his tongue (Foe 69). By placing the blame on Friday’s people and making the removal of the tongue a cultural ritual vs. a cruel act against his will, makes dismissing sympathy and moral obligation towards him easier. However, she has no way of verifying these stories and her mind is left exploring all possibilities, even one that suggests Cruso committed the violent act. Each version of the story seems just as likely as the other and she left struggling between truth and fiction.
        It is important to note that although Susan views Friday as weak and powerless, she does not initially accept responsibility for Friday. This is due to the fact that she is not needed to take care of Friday while he is taken care of by Cruso. Aside from giving Cruso her feedback about his treatment of Friday, Susan does not assume responsibility over Friday until Cruso becomes ill and dies. Once Cruso dies, Susan can not help but feel the need to take care of Friday as she is the only person he knows. To support the helpless Friday, Susan is required to give up her independence and accommodate to his needs. In this way, Friday’s silence “is a silence of authority” as it controls how Susan lives her life (Marais 135). However, it is an authority that is “one without power” (Marais 135). Marais explains that “Friday derives authority, as opposed to force or power, from the weakness of his silence” (Marais 135). This is because Friday’s “utter helplessness demands responsibility from Susan, it demands that she care and ‘be for the other’ rather than for herself” (Marais 136).
        Aside from being different, Friday’s mutilation makes him inferior in Susan’s eyes and therefore, relies on the care of those superior to assure his survival. This sense of devote responsibility is best seen when they finally are discovered and saved from the island. When the ship arrives, Susan comes willingly and Cruso is too sick to object. Friday, however, frightened, runs away and hides. Instead of leaving him on the Island, where after so many years of living there, he would undoubtedly be fine, she insists that the crew find him and bring him on the ship. Susan explains to the ship mates that Friday is like “a child,” and therefore it is their “duty to care for him in all things” (Foe 39). Here, she clearly makes an ethical argument to appeal to the crew. Saving Friday is not only right, but their duty as moral, able beings.
        In the metaphor Susan uses, if Friday is the child, than Susan clearly takes on the role of the parent. She feels ethical responsible for him because she believes, like a child, he is incapable of taking care of himself. As the parent, she looks over Friday and makes sure his needs are fulfilled. This parent-child role is further displayed in her treatment of Friday once he is on the ship. Susan knows that Friday doesn’t understand words, but she believes that he understands “tones” and can “hear kindness” (Foe 41). Therefore, in an attempt to console him, she speaks in a soft, gentle tone and says “the same words over and over, laying [her] hand on his arm to soothe him” (Foe 41). She repeats words of comfort like a parent does to a child that is frightened. She also caresses him in an attempt to make him feel safe. By this point, Friday is already on the ship and there is not real need for Susan to make him feel better, yet she feels compelled to do so anyways.
        This parental care and acceptance of responsibility continues once they arrive in London. Although Susan is not really required to take care of Friday, she decides to assume responsibility over him because she feels “a great city is no place for him” (Foe 47). The idea of him running around in “confusion and distress…wrenche[s her] heartstrings” (Foe 47). Her conscious will not let her leave him to fend for himself in a city he is unfamiliar with. Later, when she first meets Foe, she tells him she has “a man to care for, a Negro man who…lost his tongue” (Foe 48). By describing Friday’s lack of tongue while claiming her responsibility for him, it seems Susan feels the need to justify why she is taking care of him. His disability is the reason Susan uses.
        Susan’s role as the parent is further explored in Susan’s attempt to educate Friday. She instructs Friday as one would a child and directs him to “watch” and “do” (Foe 56). Susan also attempts to “teach him names of things” (Foe 57). Susan tries to emplace the basic skills of language and speech within him, in order to make him more independent and able, thus removing some of her responsibility towards him.
In teaching him language, Susan also still hopes to unlock the truth about Friday. By making Friday’s silence speak through the written word, his secret can be revealed without the use of a tongue. Speaking, as stated before, would also allow her to dominate over Friday and define him into the known. This is seen her observation: “I tell myself I talk to Friday to educate him out of darkness and silence. But is that the truth? There are times when benevolence deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to my will” (Foe 60). Attempting to subjugate him to her will, Susan tries arguing “who was to say there do not exist entire tribes in Africa among whom the men are mute” (Foe 69). Thinking so makes Friday’s silence a choice and not a disability, relieving her from pity. Furthermore, it shifts the loss of the tongue from a violent act forced on a helpless being, to decision made by someone in control of their life. However, Friday remains silent even in writing and art, and Susan remains tied to him.
        That is why when Susan fails to teach Friday language, she becomes frustrated. She feels unable to free herself from Friday. She exclaims, “I am wasting my life on you Friday” (Foe 70). Susan feels she is not getting anywhere with him. There is also a sense of loneliness in her role as the superior being. She tells Friday “Oh, Friday, how can I make you understand the cravings felt by those of us who live in the world of speech to have our questions answered!” (Foe 79). His silence not only challenges her autonomy but makes her feel singled out and alone. She continues to say, “It is like our desire, when we kiss someone, to feel the lips we kiss respond to us” (Foe 79). Aside from dominance, it is human interaction she craves.
        Susan also feels she carries “the burden of [their] story” as she must speak for both of them (Foe 81). However, the story she tells Foe remains an incomplete one. Some of the story died with Cruso and the rest with Friday’s tongue as she cannot answer questions such as “how many stones did you and your master move?” (Foe 83). More importantly she finds herself revisiting the question “how did you lose your tongue?” when retelling her story to Foe (Foe 84). Susan also tells Foe, “Sometimes I believe it is I who have become the slave” (Foe 87). By looking after the other, she feels like he has become the one in control. Furthermore, she wonders if Friday “found life with [her] as burdensome as [she] found life with him” (Foe 104). This suggests their may be a mutual sense of burden and enslavement shared by the two characters.
        This feeling of burden and imprisonment even affects her physically. At one point, having failed to teach him to speak, Susan exclaims, “Friday was upon me” (Foe 104). Unable to change him, she feels like his weight is pressing down on her. Aside from being dead weight, she views Friday as her “shadow” (Foe 115). She feels that he has become a part of her, making her unable to get rid of him. This frustration and anxiety suffocates her. She describes his silence as “a silence that rose up the stairway like smoke…before long I could not breathe (Foe 118). Friday’s silence is not only a challenge to deal with mentally, but physically as well.
        In an attempt to regain control, Susan tries to deny the power Friday has over her by claiming “Friday has no command of words and therefore no defense against being re-shaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others. I say he is a cannibal and he becomes a cannibal” (Foe 121). She claims she can “conform” him into anything she “desires” but clearly his silence does not allow her to do so (Foe 121). She does not make him to whatever she wants him to be. Marias points out that Friday’s silence has power in the way that it “resists Barton’s attempts to make it “speak,” and thereby points to his irreducibility to logocentric conceptuality” (Marais 133). Moreover, he argues that in “assuring the irreducibility of Friday’s otherness, it enables this otherness to surprise the subject and…in surprising the subject, the other challenges his/her autonomy” (Marais 134). That is why Marais believes Susan is “mistaken when she states that Friday’s silence is “helpless” …On the contrary, this silence ultimately precludes, even forbids, her from doing so by assisting in the production of infinity and thereby disturbing her ontological solitude” (Marais 134). Therefore, the power of Friday’s silence emerges from how it affects Susan.
        Unable to deny his authority, she questions whether Friday presents to be helpless in order to maintain control over her. She wonders, “Somewhere in the deepest recesses of those black pupils was there a spark of mockery? I could not see it. But if it were there, would it not be an African spark, dark to my English eyes?” (Foe 146). Here, she debates with herself about the potential power Friday may have that she was unaware of. This idea of mockery drives her mad and she exclaims after this exchange “Mr. Foe I must have my freedom!” (Foe 147). Realizing the power Friday may have over her makes her feel even more trapped and suffocated.
        When explaining this imprisonment to Foe, Susan uses the tale of Sinbad of Persia. Susan describes Friday as “the old man of the river” (Foe 147). She tells Foe, “I am Sinbad of Persia and Friday is the tyrant riding on my shoulders” (Foe 148). Friday, like the old man, first seemed harmless and powerless to her, but became an unexpected, heavy burden that falls on her shoulders. This story also represents the feeling of being tricked into the responsibility she feels as the mockery Friday may have for her. Just like Sinbad, Susan realizes too late that the other has her under his control.
        Susan cannot be antonymous and free as long as the responsibility of Friday lies on her shoulders. However, no matter how much she tries, she is unable to get rid of him. Moral obligation and the pity she feels keeps her from abandoning him. Furthermore, although Friday is “his own master” and affects Susan’s so, he is also the “helpless captive of [Susan’s] desire” (Foe 150). Susan is tied to Friday and much as he is tied to her. There is an exchange of power passing between them. It is an interaction between political power and ethical power. Friday is at the mercy of Susan’s help and Susan is at the mercy of his needs. As long as Friday remains irreducible and silent, Susan will feel morally obligated to him and he will continue to rely on her help.

Above is just a silly youtube video of what one reader got from reading Coetzee's Foe. Interestingly, he pronounces Coetzee wrong. I was so excited and proud to point this out to my roommate. I know, I'm a dork lol.

Silence: Ethic Responsibility and the Power of the Other in Coetzee’s “Foe” and “The Life and Times of Michael K”: Part 3

III. Silence and Starvation: Caring for Michael K.
        Aside from Friday, Coetzee also explores silence and ethical responsibility with his character Michael in The Life & Times of Michael K. Like the mutilation of Friday, Michael also has his own “disfigurement” that creates sympathy and stands him apart from others (Michael 4). Furthermore, Michael deformity, like Friday’s, involves the mouth and speaking. Michael’s deformity comes in the form of a “hare lip” that causes him difficulty with eating and speaking (Michael 4). Although his speech impairment isn’t as severe as Friday’s, it still exists. Moreover, Michael’s deformity is visible and not hidden like Friday’s. However, the silence that is explored with Michael comes not from his harelip but his lack of desire to speak (or eat) while at the medical center in the second part of the novel.
        From first moment Michael meets the medical officer in the second part of the novel, ethical responsibility comes into question. Unlike Susan, the medical officer is immediately identified as the caretaker of Michael. The medical officer doesn’t choose to take care of him, but it is his job. However, his job only requires him to heal Michael and get him back to work (Michael 131). Instead, the medical officer becomes drawn to Michael and feels unique concern for him because of his frail condition and deformity. Moreover, the medical officer finds Michael’s harelip a significant disability holding him back. Because of his harelip, Michael stands out from other patients. The medical officer displays his worries about Michael fitting in with the others when he tells Noel that Michael would “find it easier to get along if he could talk like everyone else” (Michael 131). Additionally, these lines show the tension between speech and power apparent in the novel. Michael's helplessness is based on his inability to speak properly.
        When asked to quickly treat and release Michael, the medical officer responds “I cannot treat and release [him] faster” (Michael 131). He feels Michael desperately needs special care and that it is his responsibility as his caretaker to ensure Michael does gets better. Duncan Chesney, in Toward an Ethics of Silence: Michael K, argues that “responsibility…demands… an accounting, a general answering-for-oneself with respect to the general” (Chesney 313). The medical officer supports this idea when he states Noel’s “responsibility is to his programm” and his are “to [his] patients” (Michael 131). He asserts his obligation to the general welfare of his patients as a medical officer. This statement also reflects the ethical responsibility he feels toward his patients. He cannot rush the healing process and throw the patients back to work because he feels morally accountable for what happens to them.
        However, aside from his general responsibility to his patients, the medical officer also feels a particular obligation to Michael. The medical officer feels tied to Michael because, like Friday, Michael’s frailty and helplessness demands the special care of the medical officer. Like Susan, the medical officer sees Michael as an inferior being that requires his help. This is seen in the medical officer's refusal to view Michael “as a man” (Michael 135). Although Michael "is older than" him, the medical officer considers him a child because of his weak condition and simple mind (Michael 135). Like Friday, Michael is viewed and treated like a child by the person who takes care of him.
        Eventually, Michael notices this special treatment and bluntly asks, “Why do you fuss over me, why am I so important?” (Michael 135). Michael doesn’t understand the ethical power he has over the medical officer. Just like Friday, he may not be in a position of political power, but nevertheless, his condition and silence has a moral authority that the medical officer cannot ignore. The medical officer goes beyond what is required from him as ethical “responsibility is responsibility to and for the singular other” (Chesney 313). Michael’s disfigurement and frail condition sets him apart and requires specific attention and care. He cannot be regarded with the general way the medical officer treats his other patients. Like Friday, he resists being reduced to the known.
        Michael is “so important” because the medical officer views him as too weak and sick to care for himself and thus treats him differently (Michael 135). This is similar to the way Susan feels when she requests that Friday be rescued from the island. The medical officer feels like it is his duty to make sure Michael is properly treated. He describes this duty to Michael as “we do for you what we have to do” (Michael 136). He cares for Michael because Michael's appearance causes him worry and pity. He feels the need to make sure Michael is cared for, and takes responsibility of his life. He would feel guilty should Michael die under his care.
        Also like Susan, the medical officer becomes obsessed with the story of the other. By the time Michael is requested to tell his story, he is very weak and has lots the urge to speak. He isn’t as willing to tell his story as he was earlier in the novel. Before arriving to the medical center, Michael sometimes would tell people his tragic story when they asked him what he was carrying (his mother’s ashes). Now at the medical center and in a weaker condition, Michael refuses to answer questions. Instead he briefly comments on the wrongs done he feel were done to him and his mother. In response, the medical officer replies “I am sure you have not told the full story” (Michael 136). Like Susan, the medical officer feels like there are important parts of the story not being told. It is those parts he wants to know.
        The medical officer’s situation, in a way, is more frustrating than Susan’s because, unlike Friday, Michael has the tools to speak (i.e. a tongue) but refuses to do so. Whether because of disability or choice, Michael’s refusal to speak upsets the medical officer. Michael resists every attempt the medical officer makes to makes him speak. Chesney suggests that Michael can “not easily be subsumed within anyone’s simple narrative” because he is “an aporetic figure that will not be simplified” (Chesney 316). Like Friday, the idea of Michael’s irreducibility prevents him from being understood and dominated. As long as he remains frail and silent, he generates pity and demands care.
        Like Susan, the medical officer cannot let give up in his quest to find the truth. He suspects that Michael did not do any of things he is accused of. However, without Michael’s confirmation there is no way of proving it. Even if there is only a very small possibility Michael committed those crimes, they still remain a possibility as long as Michael remains silent. That’s why the medical officer cannot confirm his beliefs of his physical and mental incapacity without him telling his story. He demands Michael to “just tell [them] what [they] want to know” (Michael 138). Noel and the medical officer question him incessantly, but Michael refuses to answer properly, if at all. The medical officer declares, “We bought you here to talk…we give you a nice bed and lots of food…but we expect something in return” (Michael 140). Therefore, his generosity comes with an expectation for something in return. Just like Susan, for all his hard work, the medical officer is yearning for communication with the other.
        When he cannot get Michael to cooperate, the medical officer tries to deny the hold Michael has on him. This mirrors Susan’s attempts to suggest that Friday’s silence has no power over her. He continues to argue with Noel and Michael that he is just doing his job. However, like Susan, he eventually acknowledges his obsession. After Michael confronts the medical officer once more about his special treatment of him, the medical officer admits, “Nevertheless he is right: I do indeed pay too much attention to him” (Michael 136). He may be unsure as to why he feels tied to Michael, but he recognizes that his obsession with Michael goes beyond his job. The responsibility the medical officer feels for Michael must be that of ethical responsibility. Michael “represents a limit case of the ethical obligation at the basis of this conception of community” (Chesney 316). Although being part of the community, Michael also stands out because of how his helplessness creates “obvious professional and human concern” (Chesney 313).
        Furthermore, like the suffixation Susan feels from Friday’s silence, Michael's silence also has physical effects on the medical officer. After failing to get Michael to speak, the medical officer claims, “There was a silence so dense that I heard it as a ringing in my ears” (Michael 140). Not only is Michael’s silence mentally straining, but the medical officer feels like it also physically affects him. He must continue to tell himself that Michael is “a poor helpless soul” to feel motivated to continue to help him (Michael 141). Michael’s frailty just can not be ignored.
        As a way to express this burden, and like Susan's use of the Sinbad allusion, the medical officer makes an illusion of his own. He compares Michael to the albatross around the sailor’s neck in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” He says,“You have never asked for anything, yet you have become an albatross around my neck. Your bony arms are knotted behind my head, I walk bowed under the weight of you (Michael 146). Both metaphors place the burden of the other upon the shoulders of the Orient. Although the albatross is tied around the neck of the medical officer in this metaphor, the weight would still come down on the shoulders. Furthermore, like the old man, the seemingly nonthreatening albatross caused more problems than expected. The mariner, like Sinbad, realizes too late the effects of his decision. The fact that the medical officer admits that Michael never asked to be taken care of and yet is a burden to him emphasizes the sense of ethical responsibility. 
        Interestingly, although the medical officer feels responsible for Michael, he refuses to keep Michael alive if he does not wish to live. However, the medical officer does “all he can short of force-feeding K, to keep him alive” (Chesney 316). He doesn‘t want “to see [Michael] starve [him]self to death” but he can’t violate his will to live or die (Michael 148). However, the medical officer also refuses to help Michael kill himself. This ties to Levinas claim that the other’s “exceptional presence is inscribed in the ethical impossibility of killing him” (Levinas 87). His moral conscience will not allow him to aid in killing Michael because he “cannot take on that responsibility while there is still a chance he might change his mind” (Michael 153). He would not be able to live with the guilt of causing Michael's death and he hopes that Michael still can be saved.
        While Michael lies slowly dying in his bed, the medical officer revisits his wish “to know [Michael's] story” (Michael 149). He cannot not accept the fact that Michael is “going to die”; and moreover, that his “story is going to die too” (Michael 151). This obsession doesn’t end after Michael escapes. He still feels tied to him and hope s that Michael's will be found, “despite the embarrassment it would cause [him]” (Michael 158). It is in Michael’s escape that the medical officer is able to reflect on Michael’s time at the hospital. He addresses the fact that he saw him as “more than another patient” (Michael 164). He also recognizes that he had a “craving for the meaning [of] Michaels and his story” (Michael 165). This craving to understand Michael causes the medical officer to even daydream about his escape and how he “would have to run after” him (Michael 166). In his daydream Michael gets away but he still sees himself obsessed with understanding Michael as he shouts his final words, “Am I right?... Have I understood you? If I am right, hold up your right hand; if I am wrong, hold up your left!” (Michael 167). This emphasizes how their relationship was build on the medical officers yearning for truth and knowledge of the other. Because to understand to other is to have control ove the other.

Picture representing Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Silence: Ethic Responsibility and the Power of the Other in Coetzee’s “Foe” and “The Life and Times of Michael K”:Part 4

IV. Conclusion: Assuming Responsibility for the Other
        Friday and Michael both suggest that the silence of the other has a power that demands the responsibility of those around them. Furthermore, the power of silence derives from ethical responsibility and the authority of resistance. As Marais suggests, “by assuming responsibility for the other, the subject gives him/her the right to command” (Marais 136). By assuming responsibility of the other, the subject is no longer allowed to be independent and care only for their well-being. Instead the subject is forced to place the well-being of the other before their own. Such is the case with the allusions to Sinbad and the old man, and the albatross. Both these “burden metaphor connotes ethical authority rather than political power” (Marais 146). Neither the old man nor the albatross have political power and originally appear inferior to those who later are forced to bear their burden. Their obligation to carry the burden of the other arises from sympathy and morals. The subjects find themselves drawn to help the other because of “his/her weakness” (Marais 135). 
        Both Susan and the medical officer become obsessed with this burden and wish to remove the burden by giving the silent others a voice. By hearing the truth, Susan and the medical officer hope to gain the knowledge necessary to eliminate the moral obligation they feel to Friday and Michael because “to know is to justify” (Levinas 82). However, Friday and Michael both remain silent and Susan and the medical officer are not able to place the “alien entity to a system of a prior concepts and ideas” (Marais 132). Their silence resists verifying or denying any speculations the subject has of them.
        Ir is not a coincidence that both Friday and Michael K suffer from a verbal disability that causes those around them to feel responsible for them. Coetzee uses deformations of the mouth in both characters to emphasize the helpless in their silence, while also foiling the effect that silence has to the verbal and able characters who care for them. Their silence is seen as a form of weakness in the eyes of Susan and the medical officer. However, it is this exact weakness that makes these character's pity and feel morally obligated to care for these speechless characters. Furthermore, they wish to know the stories that are capsulated deep within the minds of these characters. Friday and Michael remain mysteries and their stories remain untold. 
        Therefore, it doesn't matter whether Friday and Michael choose to be silent or if they are unable to speak. Either way their silence has a power over Susan and the medical officer. Ironically, the power of their silence comes from viewing these others are weak and powerless. However, it is a codependent relationship. By accepting ethical responsibility for Friday and Michael, Susan and the medical officer agree to do whateever is needed help them. In return, Friday and Michael are under their political power and benifit from their care. This relationship is unsatisfying for both Susan and Michael as they never get what they want from the other: truth and knowledge. Michael also does not approve of this relationship as he wishes to live in solitude and off the food of the land. As Friday and Michael never break their silences and tell their stories, both novels end without relieving the caretakers of the responsibility and obsession with the truth.

Silence: Ethic Responsibility and the Power of the Other in Coetzee’s “Foe” and “The Life and Times of Michael K”: Part 5

Bibliography

Chesney, Duncan Mcoll. “Toward an Ethics of Silence: Michael K.” Criticism:

           A Quarterly for Literature  and the Arts 49.3 (2007): 307-325.

           MLA International Bibliography. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Coetzee, J.M. Foe. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1986. Print.

Coetzee, J.M. Life & Times of Michael K. New York: The Viking Press,

           1983. Print.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority.

           Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

Marais, Mike. "Disarming Silence: Ethical Resistance in J. M. Coetzee's Foe."

           Apartheid Narratives. Ed. Nahem Yousaf. Amsterdam, Netherlands:

           Rodopi, 2001. 131-41. DQR: Studies in Literature 31. MLA
          
           International Bibliography. Web. 7 Oct. 2011.

Said, Edward W. "Introduction." Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books,

           1979. 1-30. Rpt. in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

           Ed. Vincent B. Leitch, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2001.  
       
           1991-2011. Print.

Post Essay Relief :) Coetzee Interview

I came across this video while looking for visuals to add to my paper. It doesn't have to do with my paper, but I really wanted to share it as a way of ending the class. I feel the interview really captures the Coetzee we have come to "know." Thanks for a wonderful and memorable class. Enjoy :)

Role Playing with Sinbad: "Slow Man" and "Foe"

While reading Coetzee's "Slow Man," I noticed a reference to a story that sounded all to fimiliar. The story mentioned was The Adventures of Sinbad (of Persia). It took me a second to realize that this story was also mentioned in "Foe." The story entails Sinbad feeling sorry for an old man waiting at the riverside and offering to carry the old man on his shoulder across. Having made it across, Sinbad finds himself in trouble when the old man refuses to get off his shoulders. The old man tightens his legs around Sinbad instead. This got me thinking about the roles the characters in Coetzee's novel(s) play in this plot. In "Foe," Susan beleives Foe suggests that Susan is the old man and Friday is Sinbad. Susan disagrees and argues that she is the one drowning and Friday is the burden on her shoulders. This same situation occurs in "Slow Man" where Elizabeth seems to argue she is Sinbad and Paul is the old mand and Paul sees it the other way around. I'm just going to throw two questions out there. Who do you think takes on the role of Sinbad and who plays the old man? Why? Personally, I'd say that Elizabeth is the burden on Paul's shoulders. Everytimes he thinks he is free of her, so reappears and tightens her grasp on him.