M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians” is the barbarian girl. I find myself wondering too whether he has a private ritual of purification, carried out behind closed doors, to enable him to return and break bread with other men.”, “The space about us here is merely space, no meaner or grander than the space above the shacks and tenements and temples and offices of the capital. The most interesting and complex character in this novel is unquestionably the magistrate. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. It would cost little to march them out into the desert . Our, A colonel in the Empire’s army, Joll visits the Empire’s frontier settlements in order to interrogate any barbarians who have been taken prisoner, hoping to gain information about the barbarians’ raiding plans. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. The Magistrate, the story’s first-person narrator, an administrator of a territory belonging to an unnamed empire. Have I truly enjoyed the unbounded freedom of this past year in which more than ever before my life has been mine to make up as I go along?”, “I stare all day at the empty walls, unable to believe that the imprint of all the pain and degradation they have enclosed will not materialize under an intent enough gaze; or shut my eyes, trying to attune my hearing to that infinitely faint level at which the cries of all who suffered here must still beat from wall to wall. “Looking at him I wonder how he felt the very first time: did he, invited as an apprentice to twist the pincers or turn the screw or whatever it is they do, shudder even a little to know that at that instant he was trespassing into the forbidden? :- 14 He develops a ritual of washing and oiling her nightly. For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of the other. One of the central themes in Waiting for the Barbarians is male sexuality. Vain, idle, misguided! :- 14 (The African Literature) M.K.B.University. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. And everyone, I know, in that walled town . No one can accept that an imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and never wash and cannot read or write. Struggling with distance learning? By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our, Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Penguin Books edition of. I behave in some ways like a lover—but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate.”, “It is I who am seducing myself, out of vanity, into these meanings and correspondences. If you’re looking for information on Waiting for the Barbarians  by J.M. I search for secrets and answers, no matter how bizarre, like an old woman reading tea-leaves.

“Looking at him I wonder how he felt the very first time: did he, invited as an apprentice to twist the pincers or turn the screw or whatever it is they do, shudder even a little to know that at that instant he was trespassing into the forbidden? Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the season but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Waiting for the Barbarians Characters . For The Magistrate, a man with a conscience, he feels neither sympathy nor pity.

He is aware of the dangers of passing judgement on the barbarians: while his fellow settlers blame them for lying drunk in the gutter, the magistrate finds fault with the settlers for selling them the liquor. 5 pages at 400 words per page) View a FREE sample. They exposed her father to her naked and made him quiver with pain; they hurt her and he could not stop them (on a day I spent occupied with the ledgers in my office). Although he admits to his laziness, his fondness for young native girls, and his satisfaction with the old ways of imperialism, he still emerges as an admirable and sympathetic character.

He is an aging and somewhat decadent man who explains that he has lived in the remote settlement for decades and has haphazardly and inefficiently carried out his administrative duties on behalf of the empire.