The Simultaneity of Responsibility and Unconditonal Hospitality
II: Encountering Death: Responsibility and Singularity
Both Levinasian and Derridean responsibilities introduce insightful approach to understand the notion of responsibility. However, in scrutinizing the theme of
responsibility in Age of Iron, I intend to adopt Derridean responsibility, since through the Derridean responsibility we are more likely to understand Mrs. Curren’s decision to engage actively into the South African blacks’ affairs.
According to Derrida, facing the impending death might lead to one’s awareness of his own irreplaceability and then one can further realize his responsibility.
Therefore, if we read Age of Iron on the basis of Derridean responsibility, then perhaps it is not difficult to understand why the dying woman spends so much effort to help those whom she detests. I shall argue that it is the impending death that makes Mrs. Curren apprehends the irreplaceability of her existence; she eventually
apprehends her responsibility to the South African blacks because of the
irreplaceability deriving from her death. Two major themes will be highlighted and discussed separately in the following section: one is Mrs. Curren’s singularity and
-72-
existence that she just apprehends when she is on the path towards death; the other is Mrs. Curren’s responsibility that derives from her impending death.
2.1
It is not until the personal tragedy of contracting cancer does Mrs. Curren start to ponder on the question of death. Decisions and meanings relating to death enter her life when she knows she is not far away from her destination; thus she starts to write the letter to her daughter and investigates the core value in her life. On the first day Mrs.
Curren learns of her illness, she writes: “To resist the craving to share my death. Loving you, loving life, to forgive the living and take my leave without bitterness. To embrace death as my own, mine alone” (6). Here, death is described as something that cannot be possessed or taken upon by others but the dying self. Mrs. Curren, learning she is nearing the jaw of death, begins to understand her irreplaceability and singularity.
Death belongs to herself. No one can take it away or give it to her; she must face it all alone by herself until she walks to the end.
Mrs. Curren learns of her singularity and irreplaceability because of the exclusiveness of her own death. No one can substitute for Mrs. Curren to die, nor can anybody share her fear of experiencing the nearing death. When she recalls the interactions with her doctor, she realizes that in her last days death is always an individual struggle: “[Every] day I stop before the same blank wall: death, oblivion.
Dr. Syfret in his rooms: ‘We must face the truth.’ That is to say: We must face the wall. But not he: I” (26). Death is described as something that cannot be possessed or taken upon by others but the dying self. This exclusiveness of the experience brings about her apprehension of the singularity: “[Death] was mine, for me, mine only, not to be refused. It was for me to take in my arms and fold to my chest and take home, without headshaking, without tears” (4). It is impossible to refuse death,
but people only become aware of the fact when they step into the shadow of death.
For Mrs. Curren, nobody is able to realize her feeling of death but Mrs. Curren herself. The lonesome feeling, the awareness of death seems to seclude Mrs. Curren from the other living people, leading her to feel her singularity and irreplaceabilitry.
As Derrida points out that “existence ex-cludes every possible substitution” (Derrida, 1995:41), the awareness that no one but I myself must take on responsibility
eventually brings about Mrs. Curren’s awareness of existence and her responsibility.
She helps in order to be “full” from her withering body. According to Mrs. Curren, it is her stubborn will to give that reassures her existence of herself being full: “To be full enough to give and to give from one’s fullness…A stubborn will to give, to nourish” (17). From the withered body, she starts to understand the reason why she helps. Nearing death Mrs. Curren no longer wants to live her life as emptily as the other South African whites do (111). While most of them live in an empty way, she desires a taste of existence (Gikandi 119). To live her last days to the fullest extent, she starts to realize the importance of providing her help and being responsible:
“[What] deep urge is there? Out of their withered bodies even the told try to squeeze one last drop” (18). From death, the awareness of existence, of being full, is spawned because of the willingness to give, and her awareness of existence eventually paves her way to the apprehension of her responsibility.
2.2
For Mrs. Curren, responsibility is not an easy concept to understand. Throughout the whole novel her responsible behaviors to the South African blacks become the contradiction to her age-old condition of responsibility. When her responsibility emerges initially, she is not able to understand, nor can she explain her impulse to be responsible for them. None of her responsible behaviors happening in her
-74-
remaining time can be understood in the principles of responsibility she used to believe.
Mrs. Curren’s age-old responsibility is illustrated in her quarrel with Mr.
Vercueil. In Age of Iron, when Mrs. Curren offers him to work in her garden, Mr.
Vercueil asks her that “[d]eserve… Who deserves anything” (21), which poses a covert challenge to Mrs. Curren’s “kindness”. Exasperated, Mrs. Curren yells at him:
What do you believe in, then? …I could turn [my house] into a haven for beggars…But I don’t. Why not? Because those who accept charity despise it, while those who give give with a despairing heart. What is the point of charity when it does not go from heart to heart? (22)
From her perspective, when one does not show gratitude the giver’s “charity,” then such charitable action does not have any meanings. Although Mrs. Curren does not directly refer to the conception of responsibility, it is not difficult to learn of her age-old notion of responsibility. That is, she is willing to help only those who are forthcoming to her charitable deeds; for those who despise her offers, they are not Mrs. Curren’s responsibility and the responsible deeds to help them are not
necessary. Such an expectation of gratitude from those we offer helps cannot be more normal, and it is also the life-time principles of action and thought Mrs. Curren enshrines. It is understandable that Mrs. Curren used to offer helps according to the principle. Such a principle can be viewed as her age-old conception of responsibility.
If she continus to follow the traditional notion of responsibility, Mr. Vercueil and the young revolutionary John will be the persons she will never help. Throughout Mrs.
Curren’s eyes, it seems cynicism or calculation is always at work when they receive Mrs. Curren’s helps. They maintain an attitude of ingratitude, owing to the fact that one is not forthcoming to her offer, and the other keeps resisting her with an angry
recoil (78-79). Encountering them, the old principle of responsibility is challenged.
Yet, in the last days of her life, what Mrs. Curren decides to do contradicts the
conception of responsibility she took up before. While both Mr. Vercueil and John do not merit Mrs. Curren’s helps as what she expects, she is willing to provide them with her helps. In her remaining time, it seems the definers of responsibility fail to work as it used to be.
Although she cannot explain why she helps them, there is an unusual lucidity about Mrs. Curren’s decision to be responsible for Mr. Vercueil and John. On the one hand, for Mr. Vercueil, she stays responsible to Mr. Vercueil in providing him shelter and food as well as work. Despite his unresponsive attitudes and his
exasperating behaviors, Mrs. Curren does not abandon the person who takes all her offerings for granted. She speaks for Mr. Vercueil’s alcoholism while Bheki and John beat him away. She even lies to her neighbor so that Mr. Vercueil is able to continue his residence in her backyard: “He is not a vagrant…He is a man who works for me” (24). In terms of her perception of responsibility, Mr. Vercueil should not be the person she holds duty for. Yet from their interaction, Mrs. Curren breaks the principles she previously identifies with. Her attitude to Mr. Vercueil is a total contradiction to what she has thought as a responsible deed. “Why do I give this man food”, asks Mrs. Curren (32). Her old knowledge seems insufficient to give her an answer. Paradoxically, the real experience of responsibility makes Mrs. Curren give up the knowledge of responsibility she previously believed, and this similar case happens when she encounters John. Despite John transgressing Mrs. Curren’s values, Mrs. Curren’s help, surprisingly, reaches him without much struggle in her mind.
How do we understand Mrs. Curren’s inconsistent attitudes to the young revolutionary? Mrs. Curren’s decision seems beyond her perception of holding
-76-
responsibility. Whenever John’s life is jeopardized, Mrs. Curren offers her help immediately without hesitation. But every time she makes her decision, she always feels regretful, deeming her help as a waste of time and effort. Her helps never win her any gratitude from John, and her words fall on his dead ears, too. She does not love the boy, yet when she asks herself what the reason is to help this boy, she can never answer herself properly. When John is deliberately crushed by a police car, an unknown impulse drives from Mrs. Curren. From that moment on, her willingness and impulse to help others suddenly gushes out from Mrs. Curren; thus she
immediately helps John stanch his blood, with a series of soliloquy listed as followed:
I stared at [the blood], fascinated, afraid, drawn into a veritable stupor of staring. Yet it was impossible, in my deepest being impossible [my
emphasis], to give myself up to that stupor, to relax and do nothing to stop the flow. Why? I ask myself now. (63)
The series of questions asking why she saves John do not stop there. When she visits Groote Dchuur hospital, she thinks of her decision angrily with regret:
I did not like him. I do not like him. I look into my heart and nowhere do I find any trace of feeling for him […]. While he lay in the street, while I thought he was dying, I did what I could for him. But, to be candid, I would rather I had spent myself on someone else. (78-79)
Mrs. Curren is surprised at her decision to save the boy’s life. For her, the decision to save this boy is mysterious and beyond any explanation, not only because Mrs. Curren dislikes his tendency to be stupid and obstructive but because there is a “questions of race” (Poyner 121).
Mrs. Curren’s inability to explain why she saves those whom she detests is understandable. According to Derrida, the reason to take up one’s responsibility, to decide, or to be responsible for a certain decision, cannot be pinned down as a theory that a person can acquire and learn in the moral direction. Mrs. Curren’s inability to explain her impulse to help Mr. Vercueil and John emblematizes the essentiality of responsibility. During the era of Apartheid when the blacks are “dying all the time”
(124), the South African blacks’ life might not be deemed as important. Hence, whether to save the South African blacks’ life seems to lie outside the realm of rationally validated imperative. The question of helping them might not come into the dimension of responsibility.
Therefore, the reason she is unable to understand her impulse is that her impulse cannot be defined on the basis of any commonly declared rules. When responsibility begins to spring outside the realm of rules, it cannot be more normal for Mrs. Curren to question herself the motivation to help. Thus, rather than properly defining her behavior, Mrs. Curren keeps asking herself why she holds responsibility to John:
“
Why must I be the one to take care of him? He is nothing to me
” (65). Even though she does not know why she offers help toJohn, she is very sure that it is impossible to ignore John’s life security. Her sudden impulse, as what Derridaproposes, “[takes] place before and beyond any theoretical or thematic determination”
(Derrida, 1995: 26). It is the heretic dimension of responsibility that is activated by one’s apprehension of his irreplaceability and death. The road paving to death is a process during which responsibility grows. When responsibility springs Mrs. Curren is unable to name it, and it is not until Bheki’s death does she realize she has the
responsibility to protect the South African blacks. Because of this deep realization of
-78-
the approaching death, Mrs. Curren gradually discovers her inability to keep silent about the violent Apartheid, nor can she get over the shame resulting from the inhuman violation committed by the government of South Africa. She finally
becomes able to ache for the oppressed, even though at first “there is not ache in [her]…
not the slightest” (136).
Bheki’s death is undoubtedly a tremendous impact upon Mrs. Curren.
Witnessing the first-hand experience of Apartheid oppression, of Bheki’s death, Mrs.
Curren must face up the cruelty of the apartheid system:
I thought of the boy’s open eyes. I thought: What did he see as his last sight on earth? This is the worst thing I have witnessed in my life. And I thought now: my eyes are open and I can never close them again […]. [The apartheid system] lives inside me and I live inside it. (103)
Witnessing Bheki’s death, Mrs. Curren wonders what is inside Bheki’s eyes when he nears death. The experience of nearing death establishes a relation between Mrs.
Curren and Bheki, since neither she nor he can close their eyes. Although Bheki’s death is not Mrs. Curren’s death, Mrs. Curren enters into a relation to Bheki’s death through her own being-towards-death; she finds her bearing the obligation and duty to Bheki. From that moment on, Mrs. Curren refuses to be drawn out from the cruelty of apartheid system; rather, she starts to strive for the truth: “I tell [my daughter] the story of this morning mindful that the storyteller, from her office, claims the place of right” (103). What makes Mrs. Curren face up the political intractability is not unlike the impulse she tries to help John; it is her responsibility. Death, not only hers but also Bheki’s, eventually makes her to take up the responsibility to display the truth in the late apartheid period. As a South African white, she is not indifferent to the war: “How can I be? No bars are thick enough to keep [the war] out” (103).
Up until this point, Mrs. Curren has never realized her responsibility toward the South African blacks. Even though she acknowledges herself as an accomplice of the Apartheid system, she never has a thought to voice for the repressed until she encounters death, not only Bheki’s death but also her death. She realizes she must take up the last chance to be responsible before she dies, or she will never have the chance to be responsible. She makes a confession:
In order not to be paralyzed with shame I have had to live a life of getting over the worse. What I cannot get over anymore is that getting over. If I get over it this time I will never have another chance not to get over it. For the sake of my own resurrection I cannot get over it this time. (126)
Witnessing Bheki’s death, she realizes that she is unable to keep silent of what she used to do and make her last days the time of ignorance. The apprehension of her no longer existing soon makes her realize that another chance to be responsible will never come after this very last one. Her confession of no longer getting over
anymore signifies her feeling of the need to be responsible to those who die from the violent repression. Mrs. Curren thinks of the word “weight” when she refers to the responsibility to the oppressed. Her responsibility to Bheki is as heavy as lead: “A thought in the act of dying he gave a last sign and all the lightness went out of him.
Now he is lying on top of me with all that weight. Not pressing, just lying” (124).
The responsibility she realizes not from principles but from death is like lead that lies heavily on top of her (124-125). After Bheki’s death, Mrs. Curren becomes clear of the reason she cannot turn her back on John and Bheki in that she is responsible for them.
Therefore, when John reappears in her house, she is determined to protect him.
Mrs. Curren illustrates her responsibility to John’s life by saying: “There is not only
-80-
death inside me. There is life too. The death is strong, the life is weak. But my duty is to the life. I must keep it alive. I must” (145). From Mrs. Curren’s phrases, it seems the duty of life, however minimal it is, emerges from death. Mrs. Curren has a
negative impression on him, but her responsibility urges her to protect him:
“[S]omething went out from me to him. I ached to embrace him, to protect him” (152).
She asks promise not to hurt John when soldiers swarm into her house. If there were no difference in her life, and if death never walked so closely to her, perhaps she would never have encountered her responsibility, thus having no chance to withdraw herself from the Apartheid system as an accomplice. During her last days, she is reluctant to keep silent, but becomes unafraid to defy the authority in order to protect John and Bheki. In order not to die in the state of ugliness, she realizes she must hold responsibility. Encountering death, Mrs. Curren finds
wherever she is heading for, there comes her responsibility. Mrs. Curren henceforth is able to act as a responsible subject. Responsibility saves Mrs. Curren eventually, from dying with the burden of disgrace generated by the history. It is the answer that paves her way out of the “fog of error” (136).