He is on a mission to “understand” the girl’s suffering, as though this can be done by studying her scars closely enough. As the magistrate notices though, she herself does not want to be pitied. I will not suffer for his crimes!”, “I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them. "No one can accept that the imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and cannot read or write" (143). One of the central themes in Waiting for the Barbarians is male sexuality. What could I ever have seen in her?” (47). Teachers and parents! The woman is considered property. We think of the country here as ours, part of our Empire—our outpost, our settlement, our market centre. Who would not smile? Waiting for the Barbarians Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis. All we can do is uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.”, “أمور مخيفة تجري في الليل، بينما أنت وأنا نائمين، الثعلب يسرق أحشاء الأرنب، ولكن العالم يستمر في الدوران”, “أناضل أنا مع القصة القديمة، آملا أنها قبل أن تنتهي، ستكشف لي عن السبب الذي جعلني أظن أنها جديرة بالعناء”, “أي طير يملك قلبا ليغني في أيكة من الأشواك ؟”, “الجريمة الكامنة في دواخلنا، يتوجب علينا إنزالها على أنفسنا، وليس على آخرين”, “Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. (135). Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? He wants to live in peace in his outpost, serving his... What is the connection between sexuality and male power portrayed in Waiting for the barbarians ? What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.”, “But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation. He is upset that he feels repulsed by her, and he fears that this repulsion associates him with the Joll and the Empire. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with which to fill my leisure, I pamper my melancholy and try to find in the vacuousness of the desert a special historical poignancy. Is it then the case that it is the woman I want, that my pleasure in her is spoiled until these marks on her are erased and she is restored to herself; or is it the case (I am not stupid, let me say these things) that it is the marks on her which drew me to her but which, to my disappointment, I find, do not go deep enough? Too much or too little: is it she I want or the traces of a history her body bears?”, “I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I have set myself in opposition, the bond is broken, I am a free man. “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. Chapter 2 Quotes. Quotes from J.M. is similarly preoccupied.”, “What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? 46 quotes from Waiting for the Barbarians: ‘Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.’ The simple, important quote at the opening of the novel shows that at his outpost, the magistrate has been out of touch—cut off from the evolution of colonial … The quote reveals the empirical nature of his imagination—or the limits of his imagination. Waiting for the Barbarians study guide contains a biography of J.M. “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.”, “Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.”, “You think you know what is just and what is not. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. It would cost little to march them out into the desert . He begins by trying to mark a difference between himself and Joll. GradeSaver, 29 March 2017 Web. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second best. I search for secrets and answers, no matter how bizarre, like an old woman reading tea-leaves.