J.M. Coetzee
Presented by
Emily, Candice, Tracy & Kiwi
J.M. Coetzee – Biography
• Birthday: 2-9-1940
• Where: Cape Town, South Africa
• Parents: Afrikaner
• Language: English
• Education:
☆1963, master‘s degree at the
University of Cape Town
☆1969,Ph.D. at the University of Texas
at Austain
☆1984, as professor of general
literature at the University of Cape
Town
J.M. Coetzee – Works
• As an Afrikaner’s writer, Coetzee
is introspective and concerned
about the surroundings of the
colonized.
• Coetzee’s important works: Life
and Times of Michael K (1983),
Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
and Disgrace (1999),etc..
• His most works’ themes are about
racial difference resulting in racial
conflict and misunderstanding.
Prizewinning Works
• 1974 Dusklands – His first novel.
•
1980 Waiting for the Barbarians
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
﹕
﹕
． 1999 Disgrace –
won the Nobel Prize in 2003
Waiting for the Barbarians
Introduction (i)
Coetzee often writes about racism and
apartheid. This book is no exception.
It is a story about a distant settlement
at an unknown time. The settlement is
being run by the Magistrate. They have
for years lived a peaceful life in
harmony with the surrounding natives.
Introduction (ii)
One day Colonel Joll from the Third
Bureau arrives to the settlement with
orders from the Empire. The natives—
known as barbarians to the Empire—are
recognized as a threat. Colonel Joll and
his men have come to distinguish that
threat. Joll's interrogation methods are
cruel and the natives living close to the
settlement are imprisoned and tortured.
Introduction (iii)
The people living in the settlement are
becoming increasingly convinced that
the barbarians are in fact a threat, and
that a war has to be fought. They start
living in fear and they feel that it is no
longer safe to leave the settlement.
Introduction (iv)
The one person who feels sympathy for
the barbarians and objects to how they
are being treated is the Magistrate. He
is soon seen as a traitor when he helps
a young woman back to her native
people and is himself thrown in jail.
Character relationship
Waiting for the Barbarians
The relationship between the Magistrate and
Colonel Joll is analogous to the relationship
between the Magistrate and the barbarian girl.
In both there are uneven relationships due to
unequal social positions, one is superior and the
other, subordinate.
Relationship
Magistrate Colonel Joll
Different thoughts for civilization and barbarians
Colonel Joll -- A representative of empire; he
thinks except those who are dominated by
imperialism, people are considered as barbarians.
Magistrate -- He thinks that the civilized people
who live under the empire are real barbarians.
Ex:
“ … „Did no one tell him these are fishing
people? ......‟ I fling the letter at the window.”
(2830, par 3 )
“… „ When they saw us coming they tried to
hide… Because they were hiding.‟”
(2830, par 5)
Relationship
Magistrate Barbarian girl
He is not compatible with barbarian girl.
-- He is sleepy and sleeping with girl without sexual feeling.
They have less communication because they are from
different worlds, the empire and aborigine.
Summary
The narrator, a country
magistrate, a
responsible official in the
service of the Empire,
accepts all of the order
from the colonel to
imprison the ‘barbarians’
before he realizes
barbarians’ suffering and
some unfair treatment.
Summary
Those so-called barbarian are nomads.
Then, he seems to result from
sympathy and fall in love with a
barbarian girl. Finally, he helps the girl
back to her hometown, but he is also
suspected to be a traitor by colonel and
then he is forced to be imprisoned.
Summary of the text
• The country magistrate receives an order
from the colonel to guard prisoners. At the
same time, he is an eyewitness to how
those barbarians are treated, so that he
feels sympathy toward those barbarians.
A spiritual journey
• Waiting for the Barbarians follows the
critical journey of a magistrate in an
unnamed empire. The journey is personal
and historical: it follows the cataclysms of
a disintegrating empire and the
associated crises of conscience of the
central character.
The barbarous VS the civilized
Anonymous figures and Colonel Joll
• The men lack of names don't only apply to the
civilized people, but also to the Barbarians.
• Colonel Joll, a representative of the Empire,
arrives, spreading fear among the settlers.
Dreams from narrator
• This quotes shows how the Empire is centered
around itself. "I am trudging across the snow of an
endless pain towards a group of tiny figures playing
around a snow castle― (pp. 39-40).
The barbarous VS the civilized
Dreams from narrator
• The parrot is a figurative representation of the
town and its people. The water obviously is a
representation of the Empire showed through the
characteristics of the water, murkiness and lack
of signs of life.
"A dead parrot: I hold it by the tail, its bedraggled
feathers hang down, its soggy wings droop, its eyes
sockets are empty. When I release it, it falls through the
surface without a splash― (p. 163).
About sight and hearing
to Colonel Joll
• The image of Joll's dark glasses
foreshadows the girl's blinding at his hand.
• Joll‘s sun glasses imply the absence of
humanism and his spiritual blindness.
“Is he blind? I could understand it if he wanted to hide blind
eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark, they look
opaque from the outside, but he can see through them.” (p.1)
About sight and hearing
to Colonel Joll
• Joll‘s grimly impersonal
tone is the fact that
exemplifies the Empire's
hawkish stance.
• ―‗There is a certain tone,‘ Joll says. ‗A certain tone enters
the voice of a man who is telling the truth. Training and
experience teach us to recognize that tone.‘‖ (p. 5)
• ―Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt. That is what I
bear away from my conversation with Colonel Joll…‖ (p. 5)
About sight and hearing
to Magistrate
• Magistrate blocks the sessions of torture from his consciousness by
refusing to hear. Ex. ―Of the screaming which people afterwards
claim to have heard from the granary, I hear nothing.‖ (p. 5)
―There has been something staring me in the face, and still I do not
see it.‖ (p. 170)
• Magistrate and the girl cannot speak to each other as
equals
―I myself sit ….making the day‘s entry in the log-book but listening too.
The banter goes on in the pidgin of the frontier, and she is at no loss
for words. I am surprised by her fluency, he quickness, her self-
possession.‖ (p. 68)
• Magistrate is a blur to a partially blind girl
―When she does not look at me I am a grey form moving about
unpredictably on the periphery of her vision. When she looks at me I
am a blur, a voice, a smell, a centre of energy that one day…‖ (p. 31)
Imperialism
• The imperialists fail to recognize themselves as foreign,
and instead assume their superiority, legitimacy, and
indisputable right over the natives and the land of native
inhabitant.
―They are welcome to whatever they want as long as they will stay
and guard our lives. And the more they are fawned on, the more their
arrogance grow. We know we cannot rely on them.‖ (p144)
―Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One
thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not
to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its
enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds
everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster; the sack of
cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of
desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one…‖ (p. 146)
Works Cited
Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the barbarians. London : Vintage, 2000.
• http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/voegelin.htm
• http://lc.brooklyn.cuny.edu/smarttutor/literary_analysis.html
• http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/
Colonel Joll. 8 May 2006 .
• http://sievx.com/articles/mentions/2005
• Sources of Photos:
Philip Glass: Waiting for the Barbarians, world premiere in Erfurt Theatre
on September 10, 2005. 8 May 2006 .