Age of Iron

A lie: charity, caritas, has nothing to do with the heart. But what does it matter if my sermons rest on false etymologies? He barely listens when i speak to him. Perhaps, despite those keen bird-eyes, he is more befuddled with drink than I know. Or perhaps, finally, he does not care. Care: the true root of charity. I look for him to care, and he does not. Because he is beyond caring. Beyond caring and beyond care.

I'm confused about my feeling on this. this. On one hand, I can appreciate the writing, though I don't particularly like the style. The themes tackled are heavy and the book is full of symbolism. However, I'm always kept as arms length by Coetze's narrators. The same thing happened with another book I read by him, I very much disliked the narrator. I'm not sure this is the reaction we're supposed to get in response to these characters. Or is it?

In any case, I had to force myself to finish it because my dislike for Mrs. Curren was overpowering my interest for the issues brought up. I'm reluctant to say I might have even despised her a little. Which is upsetting because technically she was a helpless woman dying from cancer. Yet it was very hard to muster sympathy for her because her reactions, thoughts and feelings felt so forced and unmoving. A former professor, abandoned by her husband, left behind by her daughter who fled to America from apartheid, who ultimately chose not to tell her daughter she was sick because she didn't want to be a burden. She kept getting involved in the lives of a homeless man and her domestic's family who was caught up in the political turmoil and violence of a dying oppressive regime. I didn't feel her involvement was organic however. It felt like she was mimicking compassion and kept wanting to help not because she cared whatsoever, but because she was afraid of being alone. Which is about the only relatable thing I found about her, the fear of dying alone.

I assume her sickness, her cancer was a symbolism for what was happening in South Africa with the apartheid. Are the white Afrikaners the cancer in this analogy or is just the system? Can they even be separated and what is the right way to end it? Mrs. Curren make several remarks that things used to be better in the past, people were more respectful, there was no violence. Was it really better in the past or were the people like Mrs. Curren unable to see from their view of privilege. She seems to be against the horrors of that system yet she feels nostalgic for the days when she was unaware of pain around her and she could live her days peacefully in her ivory tower.