In the heart of the country (2) - Book Report/Review Example

She wants to be free from the grasps of colonial discourse and relationships, but she remains entrapped in it, and Coetzee wants his readers to discover these underlying conflicts and tensions for themselves. This novel shows that Magda cannot be trusted as a narrator because her language is a product of the colonial system and her self-education lacks contextualization. Magda is an infallible narrator because she uses language that the colonial system made, and this language defines her perspective.

Magda originally stands for the colonized people who learned language from their colonial masters. She describes her need for self-expression: “I only wanted to talk, I have never learned to talk with another person. It has always been that the word has come down to me and I have passed it on” (Coetzee 101). She wants to speak and to speak with someone else in equal terms, but as the colonized, she lacks, not only independence, but also an empowering language that she can call her own. Language contains fundamental struggles in post-colonial discourse because the colonization process starts with passing on the colonial language to the colonies.

Colonization has killed native languages and replaced it with its own language system. Magda has a hard time expressing herself from her heart. She notes: “I have tried forming messages with stones” (Coetzee 136-137). . Magda writes, thinks, and speaks with the colonial language, and it becomes her bane. She says: “I creak into rhythms that are my own, stumble over rocks of words that I have never heard on another tongue. I create myself in the words that create me” (Coetzee 8). People sometimes take for granted the language they use because it seems so natural to use it, but Magda knows better.

She knows that though the rhythm of her speech is hers, the language she uses is not, and yet the same language creates her identity. If identity is destiny, Magda realizes the hardships she has to face in subverting the language that is intertwined with her fate. Aside from language, Magda cannot be trusted as a reliable narrator because her education lacks context, and it means she does not truly understand what she reads, and as she applies what she reads on her life, these interpretations are weak, if not constantly false.

Magda does not receive formal education, and she relies on her books to educate her. She writes: “The schoolhouse is empty. The ashes in the grate are cold” (Coetzee 45). She has not gone to any real school, so her education is not entirely valid without having enough knowledge and skills to understand the context of what she is reading. Every time she applies her “education” to her life, these interpretations are questionable. The books she reads are colonial books too, so she learns the colonial discourse through them.

Her language comes from her colonial education, and altogether, they form her identity. Magda depends on her education for autonomy. She is desperate to be free and to be herself, but she fails to attain the knowledge that will set her free: “How do I, a lonely spinster, come to know such as a thing? It is not for nothing that I