118 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
believe in them” (p. 200). These intellectual inconsistencies consti-
tute a deliberate strategy on the part of Coetzee to foreground the
image of the physical, embodied human being who, by turns, lives
with and struggles fully to articulate an ethical system that is itself
grounded in the materiality of bodily existence. The shortcomings
also somewhat paradoxically serve to bolster the ethical weight of
Costello’s ideas: they force us to practise the very conciliatory ethical
gesture she takes pains to promote between humans and animals.
That we should recognize intellectual failing in parts of Costello’s
argument is therefore essential because, of course, intellectual
strength and coherence are qualities that animals will never be capa-
ble of utilizing in their own defense. This effect is amplified by the
formal composition of the text itself, particularly in the first, third,
and fourth chapters, which employ a form of free-indirect discourse
with John as the primary internal focalizer.
Seeing the events of these chapters “through the eyes” of John lends
a more poignant and, indeed, visceral quality to the descriptions of
his mother. As Mulhall observes, from early in the narrative, John
describes his mother “in animal terms (as a seal and a cat, as fish and
as fowl.)”^64 For Mulhall, this crystallizes a central motif in the novel,
what he calls a “profound sense of the animality of the human being,
its internal relation to other species of animal and its embededness in
flesh, [... which] joins them together.”^65 I would add that Coetzee’s
employment of free-indirect discourse in the three chapters provides
an additional emotional valency to the narrative, establishing an inti-
mate bond between the reader and the character, which often makes
one feel uncomfortably invested in the story’s events.
As in Disgrace , this involves the narrator exposing some of the
character’s emotional cracks and contradictions. In the novel’s
opening pages, we are presented with a somewhat simplistic (and
no doubt highly selective) memory from John’s childhood, in which
his mother “secluded herself in the mornings to do her writing. No
intrusions under any circumstances” (p. 4). This generates a sense
of resentment toward his mother, which he expresses by refusing
to read her novels until he is well into his adulthood. When, at the
age of thirty-three, he finally reads her work, the experience “shakes
him,” ostensibly because the subject matter upon which she writes is