In a previous course I viewed a film called ‘A Question of Silence’. To sum up the gist of the film three women, all appearing to be middle class average women, kill a shop owner. Following his murder the ‘question of silence’ (as the title suggests) arises as all three women, through their trial and questioning by a female psychologist refuse to speak about why/how they committed such a crime. Aside from lending to the theme of feminism the film to me seems to suggest that sometimes there are no words for brutality. Simultaneously, it seems to suggests that sometimes there are no words that we can use to speak out against oppression, and that the only solution, and perhaps the most powerful tool one can use is silence.
All of this seems to me to to connect to the theme of Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K. Michael/Michaels/K, like the women in ‘A Question of Silence’ , are placed in a brutal world. Like the women in the film a great emphasis throughout the film is placed on Michael choosing silence. The emphasis on his mouth, his hare lip, and his disability (ironically referenced later as the “mouth that would wholly never shut” (119)) is stressed from the beginning of the novel. Throughout the book people beseech Michael to speak and to take action. The book starts with the initial trip with his Mother to return her to her hometown; later in his first camp he attempts to find a place between friendship and otherness (as people fear/shun him because of his mouth), after he escapes he finds himself once again alone on a farm, hiding and silent, and in the last half of the book he finds himself in an infirmary in a work camp.
Through all of his locations the question of silence is pivotal, most importantly in his interaction with the doctor in the last work camp. The doctor writes: “We ought to value you and celebrate you..the truth is that you are to perish in obscurity and be buriedin a nameless hole in a corner of the racecourse…and no one is going to remember you but me, unless you yield and at last open your mouth. I appeal to you, Michaels, yield!” (152). However, Michael has no desire to be remembered. Michael, unlike the women in ‘A Question of Silence’, is happy, or at the very least, complacent, with the ability to simply survive. Additionally, Michael has no desire to be put down in the records, to be ‘celebrated’ or have a shrine in a museum built to him. Michael simply wants to survive. I personally believe he would’ve been happy enough to be left alone in a farm in the mountains somewhere, simply left alone to survive. Unlike the Magistrate of Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and many other fictional and real men Michael does not want to be remembered and referenced as a figure in history. He simply wants to live alone, perhaps outside of what is considered a normal human existence. He doesn’t seem to be one concerned with government, existence, politics or war, stating “I am not in the war” (138) when they are questioning him about his activities or where he has been before his arrival in the second camp.
In all a question of silence for Michael K. seems to represent where he is most content. He feels silence best exemplifies his persona: “I am more like an earthworm, he thought. Which is also a kind of gardener. Or a mole, also a gardner, that does not tell stories because it lives in silence. But a mole or an earthworm on a cement floor” (182). I feel like that this best exemplifies his understanding of himself, the world, and life. He feels he is part of the Earth, perhaps out of place ‘on a cement floor’ but this is the best place for him. He does not “tell stories” because he sees things as they are, and perhaps the world he lives in, a world of civil and political unrest, is unable to deal with things as he sees them. Therefore because of oppression, because of the ways in which he contrasts with the brutal world he lives in, he (like the women in ‘A Question of Silence’) choses silence to best portray who he is. Michael K. is a silent earthworm or mole on a cement floor. He is something natural, earthly, in an unnatural world.
Work cited: (film):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086369/
(L)Imitations of Freedom 
So much of what you said reminds me of all the scholarship I have been reading, which all, in some way, came to be about language. For instance the quote you used about the “earthworm” and “gardener” is central to the position of language within the novel. The two terms serve to produce an organic being evolved being the dependence of language. Another passage which I think exemplifies the same sentiment is a thought which Michael has about himself, “Whereas the truth is that I have been a gardener, first for the council, later for myself, and gardeners spend their time with their noses to the ground.” This alludes again to that primitive state you pointed out before and that there is hope in achieving a life where one escapes the trapping design of conscious language where any source of communication is conveyed through a heightened sense of smell or any reanimated instinct. There is a large atavistic idea that exist in Michael K but I still wonder if a total or partial escape from language is possible, I believe, even though we do knot know nor fully understand the origin of language, it remains impossible to depart completely from it. I wonder if Michael K posits a reinvention of language that escape the attachments that produce the inevitable inequities that have such profound consequences. For me I don’t feel Coetzee would be so brazen or blatantly optimistic. Though the novel ends on a sort of assonant note it does so with a primitive return as a backdrop which has the potential, through its vagueness, to accommodate anything.
-Daniel Linton
-Rolando Rubalcava
“That is well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden”
It’s funny how much your post reminds me of this text- Like Candide, as Michael is introduced to heavy actions and interpretations in life, at the end, he becomes “the gardener”, that metaphorically suggests a role that involves a conscious effort to live and do, no matter how distant or separated he is from civilization. The gardener also represents a strong link between man and the environment, being the cultivator instead of the colonizer.
Also, you mention a disconnect between man and legacy, or, what it is to be remembered. There was one quote that stood out to me the most, even though it was about three words long.- when he meets the grandson of the family that lived in the Visagie, he asks Michael what his name is. Coetzee describes that moment as follows: “’Michael’ answered K”. Even Coetzee sets up the argument that his name, which can then represent what could be his legacy, is not significant.