Love For All

John Maxwell Coetzee is one of the greatest and distinguished writers in the contemporary literary world. His works focus mainly on the racial issues in South Africa, and extend to the topics of racial reconciliation, identity construction, ecological coexistence and etc. It is worth noting that animals play a significant part in the exposition of all the above topics. This thesis chooses five important novels of J.M. Coetzee for the research: Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, Age of Iron, Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. It makes a panoramic study of animal images in Coetzee’s works from multiple dimensions and present Coetzee’s unique humanistic care, profound cultural reflection and strong ecological consciousness. Meanwhile, the thesis refers to Coetzee’s autobiography Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life to explore the origins of his view on animals, concluding that his living surroundings of being a white and his innate humanitarian compassion are the essential factors for the formation of his unmatched animal view.With the main line of animals’ literary function, the thesis separately discusses the anti-colonial function, the connecting function and the introspective function of animal images. The former three chapters are independent and interdependent, which form an organic whole for the research.The first chapter analyzes the anti-colonial function of animal images. It elucidates from Michel Foucault’s discourse power theory to show how animal victims and marginalized people subvert the discourse power in the struggle of racial dispute. At the same time, it analogizes the connections between different subjects, explaining how animal images successfully mock the racial superiority.The second chapter discusses the connecting function of animal images. With the presence of animal’s unparalleled role in human society and nature, this chapter discloses the racial and ecological problems that appear from the colonization period and points out the irreplaceable functions in realizing the racial reconciliation and ecological coexistence.The third chapter studies the introspective function from cultural and ecological dimension. It reflects the problems which are needed to be faced with in the development of human civilization. By discussing the issues of rationalism, vegetarianism, anthropocentrism and animal protection movement, it helps man see the harm they have done so as to seek for a more harmonious living environment.It can be clearly noticed that Coetzee cares about the harmonious coexistence of man and animals, about how animals can be mercifully and morally treated in human world, and about how human being get along with themselves. His view on animals is not only about the care for animals, but also the love for human.