Waiting for the Barbarians

One of the major elements that permeates throughout Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, is the complete lack of knowledge. The story takes place in an unnamed frontier settlement in an unspecified time.  Throughout the novel, there is threat of a massive invasion by the “barbarians” who are thought to be hiding in the hills waiting to attack the people of the settlement. Consequently, the people of the settlement live in fear of the “barbarians” they know nothing about. In the end, the invasion never comes and the people of the settlement never learn anything about who the barbarians are and what, if anything, they want. This complete deficit of comprehension reflects Coetzee’s theme of the futility of the colonialists to enforce their ideals on civilizations they lack knowledge and understanding about.

This lack of knowledge is associated with the lack of vision throughout the novel. Colonel Joll, who is sent by the Empire to investigate and torture the barbarians, is at first thought to have “blind eyes” because of his use of sunglasses. Although he does have his sight, Colonel Joll is actually blind to any feeling for humanity. He tortures those he feels can provide him information about the oncoming invasion of the barbarians. His attempts are only met with more allusions to blindness. He beats a boy whose father he murders, leaving him with “one eye … swollen shut” (3). He tortures a young girl who is taken as prisoner and leaves her without the ability to “see properly anymore” (47). The magistrate, who he has tortured and beaten, is left with an “eye that is a mere slit” (132). Colonel Joll cannot see that his attempts to blind others are futile, that his regime of tyranny is for nothing.  No one can help him because there is no knowledge of the barbarians.

The magistrate does not fear the barbarians and tries to seek knowledge of them from relics of wooden slips he finds in bags. Although he attempts to decode these slips, he realizes his slips do not hold a single meaning, “There is no agreement among the scholars about how to interpret these relics” (129). He acknowledges his inability to comprehend a civilization that he cannot gain knowledge about and reflects that “[t]here has been something staring me in the face, and still I do not see it” (179). What he finally does realize is the harm the Empire has bestowed onto the “barbarians” and feels shame on behalf of the Empire. He wants “to live outside of history…to live outside of the history that Empire bestows on its subjects” and “never wished it for the barbarians that they should have the history of Empire laid upon them” (178). He attempts to teach the colonel a lesson on compassion and says, “The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves…not to others” (170). The lesson is lost on Colonel Joll and he flees the settlement and leaves behind the barren wasteland that he helped to create. In the end, the barbarians do not come and the people in the settlement, like the colonel, have learned nothing about humanity or about the civilization they helped destroy. The magistrate is left to feel “like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere” (180).

Like many natives of frontiers that have been colonized, these “barbarians”, who are actually nomads and hunters, only want to be left alone in peaceful coexistence with the frontier people on land which they consider theirs to traverse. The barbarians, who are basically innocent, are really a mental fiction born of colonial paranoia and a political convenience; their invention has become indispensable for the maintenance of a blind, insane power which sucks everything into its vortex of ignorance and fear.

In the Heart of the Country

            Coetzee’s belief that patriarchy is a deeply unjust institution is evident in In the Heart of the Country. The story consists of Magda, an isolated Afrikaans woman living on a remote sheep farm in the Karoo. Left without a mother early on, Magda is almost completely isolated except for her father and the few workers that are employed. She has only been surrounded by the complete and absolute power that her father has enforced upon her and his workers. Since her father makes no effort to be a companion to her, Magda considers herself as “an absence all of her life” (2). Enveloped and formed in the web of patriarchy, Magda believes that her father sees her as “zero” and sees herself as one of many such subjected women, “The land is filled with melancholy spinsters like me, lost to history” (3).  Being a woman under this complete reign of patriarchy, Magda’s value has been determined only by the domestic roles she can fulfill on the farm, one that oversees the house and its workers.

Magda feels incomplete and uses the metaphor of a hole which she sees as a result of her isolation from romantic love as well as the world. She is “not unaware that there is a hole between [her] legs, leading to another hole that has never been filled either” (41).  Magda is forced to fill this hole by forming an identity and a world out for herself. Her story consists of both her ruminations on her plight and the fantasies of action in which she attempts to restructure herself and her workers, Henrik and Klein-Anna. Magda imagines killing her father when she catches him with Klein-Anna. However, the institution of patriarchy is so ingrained in her that she has no ability to replace him. She struggles to bury him and take on the “manly” duties on the farm, but her attempts are almost impossible. Desperate for companionship, Magda attempts to alter the relationship she has with Hendrik and Klein-Anna, but she cannot overcome the strong influence by patriarchy. She instead imagines herself raped by Hendrik and taken advantage of by both him and his wife. Their actions are based on what the “coloreds” are assumed to do, to steal and then desert her. The novel ends with Magda who is completely alone with her father who is now senile and totally dependent on her. The reader is left to ponder whether if this is either a fantasy that overthrows patriarchy or another way of giving into the confines of what value patriarchy allows for a woman.

In the Heart of the Country strongly indicates that Coetzee is capable of addressing the problems that arise in a patriarchal colonial settlement that oppresses the natives, the “coloreds”, and women alike. Similar to the workers who succumb to the rule of the patriarchy, Magda’s failed fantasies are a result of a role she cannot overcome. Unfortunately, like many marginalized groups, Magda has internalized her verdict as being inferior.