THE DYSTOPIAN… UTOPIA IN THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS BY J.M. COETZEE
Emilia TARABURCA Universitatea de Stat din Moldova
Abstract
The novel The Childhood of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee presents a metafictional universe, a parable about the (re) discovery of meanings in a possibly post-apocalyptic ,,new world”. The author is researching/testing a possible variant to start life from the beginning. The locality Novilla, at first sight being an utopia, represents, in fact, a world of common self-sufficiency, in which as condition of the new life is to forget the past, a world that shapes everyone according to the same pattern, forms the same skills and tastes, blocking any possibility of transformation, a world that offers to everyone the necessary minimum, but which lacks diversity and passion, in which nothing happens and it will always be so.
By means of a condensed discourse that triggers intertextual artifices, Coetzee does not offer answers as much as formulates questions: about memory and oblivion, about stagnation and evolution, about order and chaos, about intergenerational relationships, about education, about ,,me” and ,,the other”, about common and special, about the relation between reason, senses and imagination as ways of knowing, about the uncertain and volatile boundaries between ,,good” and ,,evil”, about revolt and conformation and about much more.
Keywords: child, father, mother, education, knowledge, otherness, ,,new life”, questions, memory, parable, intertextuality.
