Age of Iron

by

J. M. Coetzee

Violence and Perspective Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Violence and Perspective Theme Icon
Pain, Suffering, and Companionship Theme Icon
Apartheid in South Africa Theme Icon
The Value of Writing and Literature Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Age of Iron, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Violence and Perspective Theme Icon

Age of Iron takes place during Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was South Africa’s government-enforced system of racial segregation, which systemically oppressed Black South Africans. The Apartheid regime disgusts the novel’s white protagonist Mrs. Curren, though she does not realize the extent of its depravity until she witnesses the violence it brings firsthand. Because Mrs. Curren lives away from Guguletu—which turns into a warzone over the course of the novel—she manages to distance herself from the atrocities going on in the country. Because she is white, she does not experience police discrimination the same way her Black counterparts do, and the news does not share what is actually going on in the country. As such, although she is morally opposed to Apartheid, Mrs. Curren can live her life relatively comfortable and guilt-free.

However, Mrs. Curren’s world is turned upside-down after she takes a trip to Guguletu to look for housekeeper Florence’s son, Bheki. Bheki no longer goes to school because his hometown is a warzone. Instead, he has taken up arms to fight against the police who wish to oppress Black South Africans. In Guguletu, Mrs. Curren finds complete and utter chaos. Everywhere she looks, the police are committing atrocities—homes are burned down, people are killed and left homeless, and no one is held responsible. Eventually, she and Florence discover that police murdered Bheki, along with four other Black boys. From this moment forward, Mrs. Curren can no longer look at her country the same way. Her life is permanently changed and, though she is close to death, she spends much of the time she has left reflecting on what will become of South Africa’s Black citizens. Mrs. Curren’s experience suggests that it’s impossible to fully comprehend the violence and oppression that other people suffer without witnessing or experiencing it firsthand.

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Violence and Perspective ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Violence and Perspective appears in each chapter of Age of Iron. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Violence and Perspective Quotes in Age of Iron

Below you will find the important quotes in Age of Iron related to the theme of Violence and Perspective.
Chapter 2 Quotes

Last year, when the troubles in the schools began, I spoke my mind to Florence. “In my day we considered education a privilege,” I said. “Parents would scrimp and save to keep their children in school. We would have thought it madness to burn a school down.”

“It is different today,” replied Florence.

“Do you approve of children burning down their schools?”

“I cannot tell these children what to do,” said Florence. “It is all changed today. There are no more mothers and fathers.”

“That is nonsense,” I said. “There are always mothers and fathers.” On that note our exchange ended.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Florence (speaker)
Page Number: 38-39
Explanation and Analysis:

The country smoulders, yet with the best will in the world I can only half-attend. My true attention is all inward, upon the thing, the word, the word for the thing inching through my body. An ignominious occupation, and in times like these ridiculous too, as a banker with his clothes on fire is a joke while a burning beggar is not. Yet I cannot help myself. “Look at me!” I want to cry to Florence – “I too am burning!”

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Florence
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Children of iron, I thought. Florence herself, too, not unlike iron. The age of iron. After which comes the age of bronze. How long, how long before the softer ages return in their cycle, the age of clay, the age of earth? A Spartan matron, iron-hearted, bearing warrior-sons for the nation. “We are proud of them.” We. Come home either with your shield or on your shield.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Florence
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:

“They work with the police,” said Bheki. “They are all, the same, the ambulances, the doctors, the police.”

“That is nonsense,” I said.

“Nobody trusts the ambulance any more. They are always talking to the police on their radios.”

“Nonsense.”

He smiled a smile not without charm, relishing this chance to lecture me, to tell me about real life. I, the old woman who lived in a shoe, who had no children and didn't know what to do. “It is true,” he said—“listen and you will hear.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Bheki (speaker), John (Bheki’s Friend), Florence
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

We sat in silence. ‘What are we waiting for?’ I asked. ‘They are sending someone to show us the way.’ A little boy wearing a balaclava cap too large for him came trotting out of the house. With entire self-assurance, greeting us all with a smile, he got into the car and began to give directions. Ten years old at most. A child of the times, at home in this landscape of violence. When I think back to my own childhood. I remember only long sun-struck afternoons, the smell, of dust under avenues of eucalyptus, the quiet rustle of water in roadside furrows, the lulling of doves. A childhood of sleep, prelude, to what was meant to be a life without trouble and a smooth passage to Nirvana. Will we at least be allowed our Nirvana, we children, of that bygone age? I doubt it.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker)
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:

“You want to go home,” he said. “But what of the people who live here? When they want to go home, this is where they must go. What do you think of that?”

Related Characters: Mr. Thabane (speaker), Mrs. Curren
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:

He is a teacher, I thought: that is why he speaks so well. What he is doing to me he has practiced in the classroom. It is the trick one uses to make one’s own answer seem to come from the child. Ventriloquism, the legacy of Socrates, as oppressive in Africa as it was in Athens.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Mr. Thabane
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:

The inside of the hall was a mess of rubble and charred beams. Against the far wall, shielded from the worst of the rain, were five bodies neatly laid out. The body in the middle was that of Florence’s Bheki. He still wore the grey flannel trousers, white shirt and maroon pullover of his school, but his feet were bare. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth open too. The rain had been beating on him for hours, on him and his comrades, not only here but wherever they had been when they met their deaths; their clothes, their very hair, had a flattened, dead look. In the corners of his eyes there were grains of sand. There was sand in his mouth.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Bheki, Florence
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:

I tell you the story of this morning mindful that the storyteller, from her office, claims the place of right. It is through my eyes that you see; the voice that speaks in your head is mine. Through me alone do you find yourself here on these desolate flats, smell the smoke in the air, see the bodies of the dead, hear the weeping, shiver in the rain. It is my thoughts that you think, my despair that you feel, and also the first stirrings of welcome for whatever will put an end to thought: sleep, death. To me your sympathies flow; your heart beats with mine.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Bheki, Mrs. Curren’s Daughter
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

What did I want? What did the old lady want? What she wanted was to bare something to them, whatever there was that might be bared at this time, in this place. What she wanted, before they got rid of her, was to bring out a scar, a hurt, to force it upon them, to make them see it with their own eyes: a scar, any scar, the scar of all this suffering, but in the end my scar, since our own scars are the only scars we can carry with us.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Bheki
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Is it time?” I said.

I got back into bed, into the tunnel between the cold sheets. The curtains parted; he came in beside me. For the first time I smelled nothing. He took me in his arms and held me with mighty force, so that the breath went out of me in a rush. From that embrace there was no warmth to be had.

Related Characters: Mrs. Curren (speaker), Vercueil
Related Symbols: Cancer
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis: