Review of Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee

             Culture can be considered as one of the most efficient forms of protest; it draws a chord in human brains of humanity and relate ability. Literature is an example of how a writer can draw a reader into comprehending experiences beyond their own reality. The highly acclaimed South African writer John Coetzee is a case in point, his third novel Waiting for the Barbarians, an allegorical novel, acting as a protest to the wider status quo, both within the literary world and the political world.

            The central protagonist in the novel, the magistrate, is a representative of the state in an isolated frontier settlement between civilisation and waste lands, with the position of protecting the settlement from a larger threat, the “barbarians”.  The novel begins with the presence of Colonel Joll and his torture of perceived barbarians; this act ignites empathy in the magistrate.  The Magistrate following this empathy, houses a barbarian girl, who was subject to torture of Joll. The Magistrate’s shift in conscience throughout the novel entwined with his fraught relationship with the girl, ensure his gradual dissension against the authority of the empire. The novel climaxes with the realisation of the impossibility of expressing his rational dissent against the empire and the Magistrate is reduced to a madman.

            Coetzee masterly depicts (Foucauldian) “regime of truth”, how the dominant regulate rationality, acting as an informal censor. The reduction of the Magistrate as a madman, gives the state prerequisite to censor him, it stunts the possibility of dialogue. The Magistrate is isolated, like the location, he is ignored, overlooked. The Empire’s predefining extents beyond the Magistrate’s mental state, the “barbarians” are viewed as unpredictable uncivilised beings and thus irrational, this acts as a justification for excessive institutional violence. This “othering” is internalised by state actors as well as civilians, and Coetzee reveals it to be a necessary precursor for the states existence, the Empire defends civilians against the “other”. The soldiers at the end of the novel are rampant in the settlement and yet the people require their presence against the “barbarians”.

            The theme of “waiting” in the novel creates suspense and conjures the attention of the reader. Not because one necessarily believes the barbarians will indeed “attack” but because of the growing paranoia, aggravation and eventual disintegration of society within the settlement. The settlement throughout the novel dissolves both physically with settlers fleeing to the city and psychologically, this is in conjunction to the effective loss of the enemy, the fact the barbarians never arrived. This “waiting” is not unknown to us in 2015, with growing Islam-phobia in Europe, politicians rhetoric references the looming threat of fundamentalist Islam in European society abusing “our” liberal democratic pillars. The result of this “waiting” is paranoia. The paranoia instils a toxicity leading to: labelling; stereotyping; and thus ultimately a failed society.

            On the note of protest, the novel received a dubious reception in South Africa in 1980 it was not, however, censored. Coetzee’s ambiguity of place and cold winters convinced the censor “it was nowhere near South Africa”, and therefore there were “no apparent parallels” to the regime in South Africa (Poyner 46). It was however “undesirable” for other reasons, such as descriptions of implicit sex and of violence. The ambiguities in the text, go beyond an attempt to avoid the censor, they are intentional; the plot represents a story beyond the boarders of one state or one historical event.

            The novel sought to challenge the status quo through form as well as content: Coetzee’s choice to reject prevailing European (and South African) literary trends, by adopting an absurdist style, inspired by Samuel Beckett. An example of the parallels is in the relationship between protagonists: the Magistrate’s relationship with the barbarian girl is comparable to the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon (Vladmir’s inferior) in Waiting for Godot. The estranged relationship between the Magistrate with the barbarian girl including his failure to remember her face when she arrived; his failure to communicate with her; his failure to have sexual relations with her, all reveal the magistrates internal loss of his self. The peculiarity of their relationship one of inevitable superiority and inferiority, is reflective to be wider than their existence, similarly the absence of location, Coetzee describes an unnamed place and dynamic and yet as the reader it is entirely relatable. Beckett’s Vladimir reprimands Estragon for trying to leave “There’s no way out there”, both pieces have this imprisonment dynamic. Despite the physical return of the barbarian girl to her people, as the reader you recognise the depths of the torture will continue to plague her life, she like the Magistrate will never be free even outside of the Empire society.

            One could easily criticise Coetzee’s refusal to divulge into detailed descriptions of the barbarians, but Coetzee does so in defiance.  The silence acts to imitate the reality of those subject to inferior treatment in the world. The barbarian girl is silent, and appears to the have no voice, but it is more complex than that. As Nadine Gordimer contended with, also writing in Apartheid South Africa, if you are in the privileged position to be able to speak, should you and what would you say on behalf of the underprivileged? The silence represents Coetzee’s refusal to assume their (the barbarians) subjectivity. Her silence is captivating, because as the reader you are hungry for a background about the girl, and yet like the magistrate you are unable to obtain it. As the reader you are however more empathetic of the girl than the magistrate, the absence of her identity, as the leading barbarian in the novel, highlights Coetzee’s protest of othering. 

            Coetzee’s subtle depiction of a torturous society plagues the Magistrate as well as the reader. And the end does not leave the reader in peace. Cavafy’s poem (written in 1904) with the same name as the novel haunts Coetzee’s underlining question:

“And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.” (Cavafy)

Works Cited:

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1954. Print.

Cavafy, C.P. Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Coetzee, J. M. Waiting For The Barbarians. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1982. Print.

Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Print.

Gordimer, Nadine. “Living in the Interregnum.” The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics, and Places. London: Jonathan Cape, 1988, 272-284.

Poyner, Jane. J.M. Coetzee And The Idea Of The Public Intellectual. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. Print.