Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)Theme / Moral

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)Theme / Moral

v  Introduction:

        

         John Maxwell Coetzee is a novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in Cape Town in South Africa in 1940. He was educated in South Africa and the United State as a computer scientist and linguist. His first work of fiction was Dusklands (1974), which was followed by Waiting for the Barbarian (1980). It was awarded the CNA prize, his masterpiece Life and Times of Michael K was published in 1983 which won the Booker prize. Disgrace (1999) is another famous novel which proved to be the best seller.

         In 1980, he published ‘Waiting for the Barbarians”, Through this novel he won South Africa’s highest honour and The central News Agencies Literary Award for it. It is

regarderd as, “One of the most famous allegories writing by J.M. Coetzee, one of South Africa’s well known writers.”

v  A social psychological study. :

         Coetzee’s fictional works are fairly representative of African reality and sensibility. He gives a social – psychological study of his protagonists who are caught in the web of conflict between will and tradition. The problems which he discusses in his novels have a universal appeal. They are not limited up to Africabut are present in all societies, religious and races all over the world.

         “Waiting for Barbarians (1980) is written in the voice of the magistrate of a remote post of Empire. The book tell the story of the eccentric old magistrate., the conflict between the official’s of the Empire, the Barbarian in the desert, when they expect to attack. The magistrate obsesses a bit about his sexual eccentricities, but it is part the book’s theme humanity. Thus the narrator is very self awareand is continually calling every thing into question. 

v  African Colonial / Postcolonial Writers / African Nationalism:

         Africa had to suffer under the colonial rule for decades and it has not become fully free from the influences of colonialism as yet. African nationalism has overtaken the colonial powers, but it has yet to give itself a new direction and order to remove the complications of the colonial legacy. The colonialists imposed their will and norms on the African society. Africa was heavily exploited by the colonial powers. African people had to live under the laws imposed by them. They had to face the crisis of values generated by the colonial politics. They shook the very foundation of the traditional African values with the entry of the colonial powers into Africa. The relation between the individual society and the government under want a radical transformation as a result, many mal-adjustments appeared between the individuals and the groups in the African society.

         In such present post – colonial conditions, the African writers such as Wole Sobinka, Chinua Achebe and Coetzee function as the guardians of the African conscience. They depict the crisis and contradictions faced by the African people. It remains an irritating or teasing fact that African nationalism has been since ages demponed by particularly. The whites European colonial powers have ruined African people civilization to a great extent. It’s complete scenarios can e studies in the present post-colonial conditions.

v  The theme of colonialism Waiting for the Barbarians:

         In Waiting for the BarbariansCoetzee depicts the same such conditions through the characters of the magistrate, colonel Jell and the slave girl the star. The African people have become free from the slavery of the colonial rule, but still they are afraid of their own people. They are afraid of the attacks of the barbarians who are the tribal people. They steal away certain household commodities  and a few sheep. It has become a way of their life. The old man says, “

They (barbarians) were coming to see the doctor”

Perhaps that is the truth. No one would bring an old man and a sick boy along on a raiding party.

v  Hysteria about the Barbarians:

         Here the magistrate, the hero narrator of this novel, says that the Africans have hysteria about the barbarians. There is no woman living along the frontier who has not dreamt of dark barbarians  hand coming from under the bed to grip her ankle, no man who has not frightened himself with visions of the barbarians breaking his house, setting fire to the curtains and raping his daughters. At this time, the magistrate observes that this is all hollow and baseless. He says,

“Show me a barbarian army and I will believe”  

He further remarks that even the prisoners of the empire believed in.

“Fresh stars, new chapters, clean pages.”

 Being in charge of law and order in the empire, the magistrate wishes that the prisoners be fed ,that the doctor be called to treat them and that the arrangements be made to restore the prisoners to their former lives as seen as possible, as far as possible.

v  The magistrates Episode:

         Then the magistrate comes into contact with the slave girl star. She is blind. She is one of the barbarians colonial Joll brought her here. The magistrate likes her very much. He has deep sympathy for her. He asks her about her living which she replaces ‘by washing’. He again asks her, “Where do you live?” Her answer is very significant, ‘I live.’ Then his sympathy goes deeper and deeper and one day he offered her to come at his place to work. He doesn’t want her to be in the streets and affirms that she must have a place of abode. He suggests her to share the cook’s room. Then she stays with him and has sensual relations with him. At last, he returns her to the barbarians.

v  Coetzee’s View:

            Here Coetzee asks,

            “What are there barbarians dissatisfied about?

            Whydo they want from us?”

He himself answers that they want to resettle themselves. They want their land back. They want to be free to move about with their flocks from pasture to pasture as they used to. Even the meanest Ostler of Peasant has contempt for the barbarians for the last twenty years. He wishes that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them. They will outlast us. We have grabbed their land even the old magistrate, defender of  law and order, has assaulted and imprisoned many innocent and helpless barbarians.

v  The magistrate; the allegorical character. :

         The magistrate is allegorical  representation of a mars doubts.  Coetzee reflects on the ma’s doubt concerning good evil, whether to contend or to sacrifice one self for just. Thus Coetzee, through the magistrate says,

“I want to say that no one deserves to die. I want to

live as everyone wants to live, to live and live & live,

no matter what!”

         In a dream the magistrate feels as if he is calling his barbarians friends someone tells him, that is barbarians language he hear, ‘There is laughter’. Such is the world the writer lives and he does not want to leave it. Coetzee concludes with the hope that a day will come when the soldiers will grow tired and go away. When that will happen the barbarians will come out again. They will graze their sheep and leave us alone. We will plant out fields and leave alone and in a few years the frontier will be restored to peace.

v  An Allegorical interpretation

         Teresa Dovey states that the novel encourages us to make our own allegorical interpretation. He has argues that waiting for the barbarian employs allegory both structurally and thematically. First it encourages us to interpret resist the colonizer’s discourse to interpret and give meaning to the ‘history of suffering oppression of the colonized’

         In fact, in the magistrates’s’ solution to the anxiety of waiting for barbarian can be glimpsed an escape that abolished eternity. In brief, the main character in his allegorical novel is of a magistrate in an outpost at the edge of an empire. He is aware of the dangers passing judgment on the barbarians. While his fellow settlers blame them for lying drunk in the gutter, the magistrate finds fault with the setters for selling them the liquor. Through many episodes, the cultural distance is presented in allegorical way at the end of the novel. The magistrate conclude that his liberalism was no more helpful to the barbarian than the behaviour of the solders who make on them .