아프리카ㆍ중동

This paper aims to analyze the problem of violence in South African history rooted in racism and patriarchalism, centering on J. M. Coetzee's 1977 second novel, In the Heart of the Country. Throughout this novel Coetzee intends to lead South Africans and international readers to examine the Apartheid ideology and patriarchal culture prevalent in South African society. Social phases are represented by the patriarchal oppression and the psychological conflicts between the main character, Magda and people surrounding her such as her father and their servants. The hysterical spinster Magda is ignored by her father and even by their servants in the patriarchal society. She is psychology-impoverished because of her environment, and this is why she was engrossed in her journals, which are in essence monologues. Magda's narrative, consisting of 266 numbered journal entries, can be suspected as unreliable due to her inconsistent voice about events she experienced on the farm, the novel's background from the beginning to the end of the work. Coetzee suggests that Magda's inconsistency is based on South Africa's unstable race, gender and class hierarchy, as well as its inter-racial violence, segmentation, and fathers’ general oppression of daughters. This novel, above all, significantly focuses on Magda's subversive acts in a context of race, class, and gender to illuminate social rupture. That is to say, Coetzee's narrative strategies throughout In the Heart of the Country propose to denounce South African society's inherent contradictions.