"Youth", J. M. Coetze - the main character in the book

Résumé du document

Youth' relates to a young man who has left South Africa after having finished his studies to live in London. According to him, he can reveal himself as a poet, as an artist, he can only get rid of his bleak appearance by leaving his native country. He expects a lot from London where his destiny might have a lot to offer him. Throughout the novel, we get acquainted with the main character and all the paradoxes within his personality, the opposition of what he sees as his true self and his appearance, and at the same time, a violent self-depreciation, and the rejection of his origins.

Extraits

[...] Besides, he wonders if woman who unlocks the store of passion within him if she exists, [would] also release the blocked flow of poetry 134) However, he doubts that anyone would be interested in him, any attention to him with his notable lack of fire” 136). It seems that from the exterior, his main feature is only dullness, lack of fire. Self-depreciation That leads us to his appearance, how he sees himself, and more precisely, how doubtful he is about himself. [...]

[...] At the end the present, the present indefinite, he is cold: cold, frozen”, even hope has left him. [...]

[...] It bothers him to receive mail from his mother, and he is also afraid of becoming like his father. This rejection is absolute, total, since he even refers to his ancestors, the Dutch, as being all nations, the dullest, the most antipoetic”. He waits for destiny to unveil him, but at the same time he wishes he could put a veil over his past. The main character seems to be always waiting for something that would better his life, that would turn him into what he thinks he really is, a poet. [...]

[...] Indeed, before university, he believed he was intelligent, “that as long as he was clever enough he would attain everything he desired” but university showed him he was not the cleverest”. Thus, he doubts about his appearance, his intelligence, and this self-doubt almost turns out to be self-hatred. For instance, resigning from IBM makes him quitter, a loser, unclean” 106), and at the end of the novel, he wonders if his depths are not just anything else than “coldness, callousness, caddishness” 131). [...]

[...] South Africa is too violent a society to understand poetry, thus leaving for London seems to be the right solution for him. He winds up working as a programmer though, and little by little he writes less and less, and is confronted with all his failures: failure at work, failure in making friends, failure in finding love, failure in his attempt to become a poet. Youth can be seen as a bildungsroman, in the sense that we are confronted with the experience of the main character, we see him evolve, from South Africa where he had faith in his future as a poet, to London, where after having worked several months as a computer programmer he even stop writing at all, as if forgetting what had dragged him to London. [...]