How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I was on my way out to the shops, in the act of opening the garage door, when I had a sudden attack. An attack: it was just that: the pain hurling itself upon me like a dog, sinking its teeth into my back. I cried out, unable to stir. Then he, this man, appeared from somewhere and helped me into the house. I lay down on the sofa, on my left side, in the only comfortable posture left to me. He waited. "Sit down." I said. He sat. The pain began to subside. "I have cancer," I said. "It has made its way into the bone. That is what hurts." (1.33)
As if the mere knowledge of her own impending death weren't bad enough, Mrs. Curren also has a ton of physical pain to deal with. This moment paints a really vivid picture of what Mrs. Curren's physical suffering is like: she feels like she can never be comfortable. Can you imagine having only one position to lie in that feels comfortable to you?
Quote #2
Who cares? When I am in a mood like this I am capable of putting a hand on the breadboard and chopping it off without a second thought. What do I care for this body that has betrayed me? I look at my hand and see only a tool, a hook, a thing for gripping other things. And these legs, these clumsy, ugly stilts: why should I have to carry them with me everywhere? Why should I take them to bed with me night after night and pack them in under the sheets, and pack the arms in too, higher up near the face, and lie there sleepless amid the clutter? The abdomen, too, with its dead gurglings, and the heart beating, beating: why? What have they to do with me? (1.54)
Mrs. Curren's physical suffering also carries an emotional impact. She feels totally dissociated from her own body, which she feels has betrayed her. It's as if she can't believe she's trapped in her own body.
Quote #3
"Rabbits," I said. "They used to belong to my domestic's son. I let him keep them here as pets. Then there was some commotion or other in his life. He forgot about them and they starved to death. I was in hospital and didn't know about it. I was terribly upset when I found out what had been going on unheeded at the bottom of the garden. Creatures that can't talk, that can't even cry." (1.103)
Mrs. Curren doesn't just think about her own suffering all the time; she reflects on the suffering of animals. Is it possible, though, that she sort of identifies with the slow, painful death that the rabbits experience?
Quote #4
I would cry my cry to you if you were here. But you are not. Therefore it must be to Florence. Florence must be the one to suffer these moments when a veritable blast of fear goes out from me scorching the leaf on the bough. "It will be all right": these are the words I want to hear uttered. I want to be held to someone's bosom, to Florence's, to yours, to anyone's, and told that it will be all right." (2.31)
Another interesting facet of Mrs. Curren's suffering is the way she feels so utterly and totally alone. We can only imagine how horrifying it is to go through what she's going this without anyone to comfort her. Florence and Mrs. Curren aren't family; we doubt they even care about each other that much. Still, Mrs. Curren doesn't have that many options.
Quote #5
An old woman, sick and ugly, clawing on to what she has left. The living, impatient of long dyings; the dying, envious of the living. An unsavory spectacle: may it be over soon. (2.136)
Mrs. Curren isn't just aware of her suffering as it affects her; she's cognizant of how others view her death. She starts to realize that the dying don't really have a place in the world of the living.
Quote #6
With an uncertain air, the man in blue straddled the bodies again. What he should have done was to lift the dead weight of the other boy, who lay face down across Bheki. But he did not want to, nor did I want him to. There was something wrong, something unnatural in the way the boy lay. (2.184)
When Bheki and John get in their accident, we stop focusing solely on Mrs. Curren's suffering and become aware of others' suffering instead. This moment is interesting because it seems like Mrs. Curren is able to empathize with the pain that the boys experience. Do you think it's possible that she's able to put herself in their shoes because she has experienced so much pain herself?
Quote #7
The other boy lay sprawled on his back now. With his jacket the plumber was trying to staunch the blood that streamed down his face. But the flow would not stop. He lifted the wadded jacket and for an instant, before it darkened with blood again, I saw that the flesh across the forehead hung open in a loose flap as if sliced with a butcher's knife. Blood flowed in a sheet into the boy's eyes and made his hair glisten; it dripped onto the pavement; it was everywhere. I did not know blood could be so dark, so thick, so heavy. What a heart he must have, I thought, to pump that blood and go on pumping! (2.193)
Doesn't it seem like Mrs. Curren is particularly attuned to other people's suffering now? She watches the way John's body reacts to his injury with total fascination. Maybe this is because she's spent so much time thinking about how her own body is breaking down.
Quote #8
"And I am sick too," I said. "Sick and tired, tired and sick. I have a child inside that I cannot give birth to. Cannot because it will not be born. Because it cannot live outside me. So it is my prisoner or I am its prisoner. It beats on the gate but it cannot leave." (2.352)
Here, Mrs. Curren expresses how she's pretty much stuck in her predicament. She feels hopeless because she knows that she will always have cancer – there's no getting rid of it.
Quote #9
I told myself: Have a hot bath, rest. But an icy lethargy possessed me. It took an effort to drag myself upstairs, peel off the wet clothes, wrap myself in a robe, get into bed. Sand, the gray sand of the Cape Flats, had crusted between my toes. I will never be warm again, I thought. Vercueil has a dog to lie against. Vercueil knows how to live in this climate. But as for me, and for that cold boy soon to be put into the earth, no dog will help us anymore. (3.202)
Here, we see something else besides her cancer causing Mrs. Curren to suffer. She has witnessed a horrible scene of violence and suffering, including Bheki's death. She may think she'll never be warm because she's been out in the cold for a while, but it seems just as likely that she uses the cold to describe her feelings of helplessness. Coetzee's so tricky!
Quote #10
Grief past weeping. I am hollow, I am a shell. To each of us fate sends the right disease. Mine a disease that eats me out from inside. Were I to be opened up they would find me hollow as a doll, a doll with a crab sitting inside licking its lips, dazed by the flood of light. (3.221)
One of the biggest side effects of Mrs. Curren's suffering is the sense of hopelessness it gives her. She feels like her cancer has transformed her into somebody else entirely – she literally seems to think that nothing is left of her old self.