Thinking activity: Waiting for Barbarians

Thinking activity: Waiting for Barbarians

J. M.Coetzee is a South African born novelist, critic, essayist, translator, linguistic. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 9 February 1940, the elder of two children. 

He was widely noted for his novels about the effects of colonization.

Education

He got his earlier education at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. After that in 1972, he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town.

Works:

He is well known for his two fictional work; Dusklands and Waiting for the Barbarians, these work won South Africa's highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award; and the Lige and Times of Michael K. And for which Coetzee was also awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. Coetzee became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice.  His other well-known works are:

•       Foe 
•       Age of Iron
•       Diary of Bad Year
•       Slow Man
•       Life & Times of Michael K
•       The Childhood of Jesus
•       Disgrace
•       The Master of Petersburg

Waiting for the Barbarians

It is a torture novel about the local native population who is referred to as the "barbarians."The novel is written during the apartheid era in South Africa. And it is a political allegory about the paranoia at the roots of imperial narratives and the blood lust of colonial violence. Basically, it is the story of the unnamed magistrate who is the head of one town. The other character is Colonel Joll who represents a fictionalized empire. The entire story goes further with the rumor that Barbarians are planning to attack on Empire. To find out the truth Colonel Joll is traveling from town to town to find the truth. In this process, he also tortured men and many other nomadic prisoners. He keeps on showering his brutalities over other- the Barbarian people. After that Joll eventually leaves for another garrison and finally, the magistrate guiltily helps the surviving prisoners to recover.

The other important episode is that when magistrate encounters a blind bagger girl, one of the victims of Colonel Joll. He brings her at his home and while showering her, he comes to know that she has been tortured. The magistrate is torn between his desire to help her and his desire to sleep with her. But the girl denies this affection and chooses to clean and cooking for him. In this situation magistrate struggle with his complex relationship with the girl and decides to leave the girl with her own community. And he parts for it along with the girl and her four soldiers.

On the trip, the girl and the magistrate begin a sexual relationship. And after seeing the barbarian band ahead of them the girl decides to join them. After that on their way to home magistrate and soldiers met by a group of a hostile soldier. who escort them inside. A magistrate is charged with consorting with the enemy. He is tortured by Joll but he is released, surviving only because of the kindness of remaining friends. At the same time, fear of an impending barbarian invasion grow, the guards become more arrogant. Their actions indicate that barbarians are not an outsider but the colonizers. Three months pass and townsfolk come to know that they are defeated by barbarians without any violence. Magistrate tries to recover from this but he is also ashamed of being a part of Empire. At the end of the novel, each man of Empire including Joll are struggling for their own survival. And the magistrate is emerging out as a leader.