자전적 고백 —J.M. 쿳시의 소년 시절에 나타난 소속의 문제

J.M. Coetzee’ Boyhood is part one of his autobiographical trilogy: Scenes from Provincial Life: Boyhood, Youth, Summertime. By defining Boyhood as an autobiography, this paper examines how Coetzee employs third-person present tense as a strategy for revealing his truthful confession, (un)belonging. First, the use of the third-person present tense in Boyhood allows the narrator to set his estranged self and then to more objectively confront the historical self. The distance enables the narrator to avert self-deception and generates a dialogue between the ‘self-of-writing’ which is doing the writing and the written self, which leads to considering protagonist John’s confession as Coetzee’s own. Second, John, who experiences how prevalent (post)colonial dichotomy and discourse, resists belonging to the discriminatory system in South Africa. John responds to it by engaging his unusual relationship between his father and mother and by leading to emotional and physical reactions such as his vulnerable mind, illness, and even favorable response to English culture. Finally, John’s (un)belonging status between Afrikaans and English culture is transcended through identification with the farm. John recognizes that the farm which is the land does not represent any of the systems of Afrikaans Nationalism, English culture, nor native South Africans.