Reading 1001 discussion

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Questions for "The Vietnam Project"

1. What is the function of the propaganda detailed in the "Vietnam Project"? How does it relate to the power dynamics Coetzee often explores?

2. Who is the narrator, and what are their motivations in investigating this project? What are the limitations of their perspective?

3. How does this novella function as a story about the act of storytelling itself? What does it reveal about the relationship between narrative and manipulation?

Questions for "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"

4. What does Jacobus's narrative reveal about the nature of colonialism in South Africa? How does his own identity become entangled with the colonizers' perspective?

5. How does Coetzee portray the South African landscape and its inhabitants? What is the significance of the "powerful and the powerless" in this novella?

6. To what extent is Jacobus's narrative a confession? What does it mean to tell his story, and what are the implications of his self-analysis or lack thereof?

General Questions for Dusklands

7. What is the relationship between "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"? Do they offer different lenses through which to view similar themes of power and conflict?

8. Both novellas feature distinct narrative voices. What makes these narrators unreliable? How does their unreliability shape the reader's understanding of the events?

9. How does Dusklands fit within the literary tradition of other colonizing narratives, such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

10. Considering J.M. Coetzee's broader work and his criticisms, what deeper critiques of society, power, or storytelling might he be making with Dusklands?

1. What is the function of the propaganda detailed in the "Vietnam Project"? How does it relate to the power dynamics Coetzee often explores?

I found this section a very diffcult read and perhaps have not taken in what was intended, but I thought the main character in The Vietnam Project was engaged on propaganda to dehumanise the Vietnamese people in the hope that this would increase support for the war in the USA. In the course of this, he became convinced that the military were taking the wrong course in conducting a war against a whole people which could never be won. They failed to "divide to conquer". And he was locked up, either because he was really mentally ill or because he was a propaganda hand grenade liable to blow up in everyone's face, or both.

4. What does Jacobus's narrative reveal about the nature of colonialism in South Africa?

It shows the colonizers believing in their own superiority while failing to understand anything about native culture. Jacobus believed that his servants were part of the ruling culture and would be loyal to him, without having any idea that their loyalties would lie with other native African people, even if they didn't have a common language.

It reveals that the colonizers were stupid in other ways too. Jacobus finds a cache of gold dust on a river bank, but he completely fails to exploit it. He thinks his journey a failure, even after the native tribe and his servants are wiped out, because he didn't shoot many elephants. But great riches were in his grasp, if he had only seen them.

7. What is the relationship between "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"?

These two stories both show an external nation attempting to dominate a native culture and apparently succeeding, but at a great cost that the dominant culture may not recognise.

Do they offer different lenses through which to view similar themes of power and conflict?

Well, yes.

Questions for "The Vietnam Project"

1. What is the function of the propaganda detailed in the "Vietnam Project"? How does it relate to the power dynamics Coetzee often explores?

Our narrator outlines the need to play to the general beliefs of the Vietnamese rather than attempting to use Western assumptions with them. He sees the Vietnamese as having little individual motivation and instead being a tribe that looks to a father or authoritarian figure as a matter of course. He also believes that they will switch sides to a superior father figure if the western army makes the existing father figures vulnerable and weak. Coetzee often plays with the nature of power both as a people and as individual's dominance over others.

2. Who is the narrator, and what are their motivations in investigating this project? What are the limitations of their perspective?

Our narrator is a propagandist in the service of the military in Viet Nam. He is writing a report for his direct supervisor about how best to effect a change of loyalty in the Vietnamese people. However, he has never been in the field and doesn't actually know anything about these people as other human beings. He only knows what he has been able to research.

3. How does this novella function as a story about the act of storytelling itself? What does it reveal about the relationship between narrative and manipulation?

Our narrator slides from being the writer of a propaganda story about Viet Nam to being the main character in the drama in which he falls under his own manipulative fantasies about power and being free of entanglements (namely his wife).

Questions for "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"

4. What does Jacobus's narrative reveal about the nature of colonialism in South Africa? How does his own identity become entangled with the colonizers' perspective?

Jacobus assumes that he is superior in every way. Even when he adopts the outward living standards of the Bushmen through the necessity to survive, he believes that his natural superiority, a superiority of the mind, will not only bring him through but divide him from the savages that he is emulating. He just naturally assumes that the Hottentots he encounters should be happy to feed him and care for him when he falls sick but does not conversely believe that they should appropriate his oxen and wagon in exchange for his intrusion into their land.

5. How does Coetzee portray the South African landscape and its inhabitants? What is the significance of the "powerful and the powerless" in this novella?

The landscape is rich with resources (animal life) and yet it is a brutal territory of drought and floods. The two kinds of people that inhabit this land have mastered its nature and know how to live off the land (Bushmen) or use the land for the nomadic lifestyle of cattle grazing (The Hottentots). The white man brings no redeeming culture or superior world view. Inside he brings devastation in the form of alcohol, firearms, gambling and diverse options that drive the native people to abandon their ways. Although the narrator spends a large part of the novella powerless and in need of care by the natives, he never once considers that he owes them anything other than his revenge.


6. To what extent is Jacobus's narrative a confession? What does it mean to tell his story, and what are the implications of his self-analysis or lack thereof?

His self analysis is almost completely that of a white man arguing with himself about how to best deliver revenge against the natives to the best effect. His story is not the one in the history books which we get a change to see a bit of after the main section of the novella.

General Questions for Dusklands

7. What is the relationship between "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"? Do they offer different lenses through which to view similar themes of power and conflict?

exactly....

8. Both novellas feature distinct narrative voices. What makes these narrators unreliable? How does their unreliability shape the reader's understanding of the events?

Actually they are very reliably mad. Their perspective is unreliable in relation to a factual truth but we are not give that factual truth. In fact we are only given clear clues as to how our narrators wonder off from truth. In the first section, our narrator doesn't recall exactly why he should hurt anyone. In the second section, our narrator recalls very clearly his treatment at the hands of the natives but in telling the tales of Klawer, his long time loyal dependent, he kills him off three ways and we have no idea which one was correct.

9. How does Dusklands fit within the literary tradition of other colonizing narratives, such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

I felt that the book had the flaws of being a "first book" in which Coetzee attempted much, achieved much but also didn't manage to present a whole in either of the sections. I thought that the brutality of the second section was quite illustrative of a colonialist and his relationship to the indigenous people that I had not read elsewhere.

10. Considering J.M. Coetzee's broader work and his criticisms, what deeper critiques of society, power, or storytelling might he be making with Dusklands?

As a first book he was just beginning to explore his themes and his storytelling was not as fluid as some of his other books but his ability to investigate and illuminate colonialism and power was already well formed.

10. Considering J.M. Coetzee's broader work and his criticisms, what deeper critiques of society, power, or storytelling might he be making with Dusklands?
Persistence of violence.
Creating the "other" allows for acts of cruelty and violence without feeling guilty
Power and dehumanization

For some reason I was having a hard time posting to questions. I give up. I lost most all of it but my review covers most of these questions so .... see my review for more details.

Questions for "The Vietnam Project"

1. What is the function of the propaganda detailed in the "Vietnam Project"? How does it relate to the power dynamics Coetzee often explores?

Justifies war and dehumanization of the Vietnamese. “In my writings on Vietnam, which I do not think about because I become disturbed and lose ground, I strove too, against great odds, to impose order on an art of chaos, though without success.”

2. Who is the narrator, and what are their motivations in investigating this project? What are the limitations of their perspective?

The narrator is a military specialist named Eugene Dawn. The limitations are his descent into madness. “I never did turn into a soldier with a gun, but I did become a military specialist who made definite contributions to the science of warfare.”

3. How does this novella function as a story about the act of storytelling itself? What does it reveal about the relationship between narrative and manipulation?

I am not sure I can adequately answer this question. The gruesome descriptions of war definitely tell the downsides of war and given that the book was written in 1974 Coetzee was taking his stance against the war. The narrative of being in Eugene’s head especially during the seizure of his son was very impactful. “Why should stress have driven me to nearly fatal assault on a child I love and not to suicide, for example, or to alcohol? We are presently investigating the hypothesis that my breakdown was connected with my background in warfare.”

Questions for "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee"

4. What does Jacobus's narrative reveal about the nature of colonialism in South Africa? How does his own identity become entangled with the colonizers' perspective?

5. How does Coetzee portray the South African landscape and its inhabitants? What is the significance of the "powerful and the powerless" in this novella?

It describes the inequities of the time period. In the Afterword, the Hottentots are described as “a race of thieves, vagrants, and beggars.”

6. To what extent is Jacobus's narrative a confession? What does it mean to tell his story, and what are the implications of his self-analysis or lack thereof?

After the Namaqua Hottentots let him go he thinks of all that has happened, he says, “With new eyes of knowledge,…” and “the scar of violence I had done myself.” “The Namaqua, I decided where not true savages.” But then he seeks revenge and kills 4 people, very brutal.