Вестник КазНПУ им. Абая, серия «Филологические науки», №4(62) 2017 г.
188
The writer speaks of the human attitudes, describes the border between Blanch and Elizabeth, which is
impossible to overpass, as the disease of loneliness and indifference to one another, embracing the mankind.
L.Chukhina in her research work “Problem of man in religious philosophy” writes: “Existence of two social
systems, different positions of men in these systems bring different viewpoints to the development of social
tendencies. Different social ideals, exhibit different approaches, to the creation of the problems and to the
solution of the human problem. This shows itself in the theme of man, in understanding social life, in the self-
belonging character of its nature, in the aim and intentions and in the existence of these problems [14, 58].
In fact, differentiations in the views on life of the two sisters are linked with the fact that they stay in
different to each-other poles. The fact that Blanch says that they are sisters only “biologically” and
“Blanche’s spiritual sisters are those, who share her religious views”. This fact speaks of the fact that the
abyss between them is too deep [6]. “The subject of loneliness of Coetzee is the man and his life” said the
investigator D.Konkin. D.Kinkin investigates the problem of loneliness in the creative activity of the writer
and truly stresses the fact of becoming strangers of his heroes to their own selves “Coetzee involves the
whole spectra of the man problem, though he himself cannot clarify this completely, without keeping the
readers apart from the real events, describes the human life with all its details” [15, 100].
The two sisters who have met after long years of separation do not go on well with each-other, stay in
separate rooms of the hotel, only they meet at the meeting hall. Christian obedience of Blanch, her love for
Jesus and her religious views creates feelings of sorrow in her sister and she does not accept her
knowledgeful sister to turn “back” to the middle ages. Blanche’s humanitarian orientation, her religious
report at the university is not met unanimously by the audience and her thoughts linked with man causes
university professor’s protest:
“The proper study of mankind is man, says professor Godwin. And the nature
of mankind is a fallen nature. Even your sister would agree with that. But that should not prevent us from
trying – trying to improve. Your sister wants us to give up man and back to God”
[6].
This misunderstanding taking place between two sisters makes Elizabeth think and though she makes
attempts to communicate with her sister on the last day of her being in Africa by coming to the house, where
she lived, she comes to the conclusion that there was no way going back:
“And that will be that. We will not
see each-other again, Blanch and I, she thinks, not in this life”
[6].
The thoughts on life and death, the life in this world and the life after death bothers her, she searches for
answers to the problems linked with the place of a man in this world, his mission, the things that he can do
and the things that he cannot do, and the questions linked with conviction and no conviction. She calls a
wasted life of a man called Josef, who has spent all her life in the church, and who has made a cross
imitating the moment of torture, committed on Jesus. She doesn’t understand Blanch, when she says that this
is the sense of his/her life and she protests saying: “this can’t be the sense of life”.
Elizabeth who stands in different positions with her sister, being in such a near distance to her, she is not
indifferent to the fact of being “far away from her”. J.M. Coetzee shows that in the XX century the close
relatives have been separated by “the Chinese Wall” and indicates it as a problem of the mankind, as a
calamity embracing the whole humanity. The character of a man which Coetzee has created is the description
of a modern man in literature.
Robert Pippin, who investigated philosophical bases of the creative activity of Coetzee, wrote in his
article called “Philosophical Fiction? On J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello”.
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