Authorial Vs. Figural Narrative Situations in Coetzee’s...

Boyhood is a story of initiation with autobiographical characteristics when it comes to the content of the text. However, unlike the conventional narratological pattern of most autobiographies (first person, past tense), the narrator in Boyhood is an omniscient third person one, speaking in the present tense. The use of pronouns: â€Å"he,† â€Å"his mother,† â€Å"his father,† and â€Å"his brother,† rather than their names, enforces a sparse, universal feel, yet at the same time, Coetzee the individual, is evident and distinct. The fictional memoir is a combination of both authorial and figural narrative situations: the heterodiegetic narratological structure provides distance, a remove from the subject, but through psycho-narration we, as the implied†¦show more content†¦Coetzee purposefully creates this duality in the narratological structure in order to clearly illustrate his childhood self-portrait. The third person narration and the specifi c usage of â€Å"he† in place of â€Å"I† increases objectivity, but does not sound masked or artificial like one may think, because Coetzee, as the author, knows his projected self is transforming, protean, and abstract, and he wants the reader to acknowledge this mutable pattern. He intends for this ambiguity in the voice to reflect the ambiguity of his young character. The following line contains both the removed â€Å"he,† as well as internal focalization: â€Å"He is proud of how little he drinks. It will stand him in good stead, he hopes, if he is ever lost in the veld. He wants to be a creature of the desert, this desert, like a lizard† (83). Young Coetzee is the central character; the others only exist within the past story he is relaying. Thus, the immanent voice we receive from the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings is dominant over the distancing the third person narration creates. Overall, the authorial narrative situation creates a ga p between Coetzee’s younger self as a character and his modern self as the author and objective viewer (with the implied reader), yet the figural narrative structure clearly illustrates his perceived self and personality while growing up, by accessing his feelings and thoughts. He shares his life experiences with the reader, that helped shape the man he