The fact that J. M. Coetzee does not use a specific setting, ruling entity or named protagonist in his 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians indicates that he is using his work to make a universal interrogation of inhumane regimes, including the system of Apartheid in his home country of South Africa. Coetzee facilitates this examination via his protagonist, a white Magistrate who becomes disillusioned with his “easy years” (9) in a rural settlement, when a high-ranking officer from the Empire tortures and kills an obviously harmless elderly man and traumatizes a young boy. The officer, named Colonel Joll, insists that the man and the boy were thieves who simply needed “pressure” (5) in order to admit their crimes, but the Magistrate knows better. When the Magistrate confirms his suspicions about the Colonel’s torturous tactics, the Magistrate’s life and outlook on the colonizer/colonized relationship is forever changed, sparking in him a great desire for understanding of himself, the barbarians and the merciless Empire soldiers.
The atrocities committed against the elderly man and the boy make the Magistrate question his own identity as a "servant of the Empire" (16). He says of the event that “I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering” (21). In other words, he can no longer claim to be ignorant of the Empire’s tactics after witnessing their barbarous effects. From there, he begins to realize his own unwitting role in the Empire’s actions, confiding that “never before have I had the feeling of not living my own life on my own terms” (40). In other words, despite his distaste for the Empire’s dealings, his own role as magistrate makes him at least partially complicit in those acts. It is only after he leaves his post to meet with the barbarians and is subsequently jailed for treason against the Empire, that he finally feels as though he has broken free of his ties to the ruling entity: “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” (78). Coetzee presents interesting irony here. The Magistrate is happier to be jailed and free from his ties to the Empire than to be free but forced to associate with a ruling ideology with which he does not agree.
But, the Magistrate’s quest for understanding does not stop with himself, it reaches beyond himself to the barbarians, as well. He understands that he cannot fully comprehend his role in the colonizer/colonized relationship until he truly understands the “other” in all its complexity. In an effort to come to this understanding, the Magistrate takes in a barbarian woman who has been crippled and blinded by the Empire soldiers. But he learns more about himself than her in the process of trying to help her. He realizes that in fact, “the distance between myself and her torturers ... is negligible” (27). In other words, despite his kindness, he is still a white man who is in a remote way associated with the men who tortured her; therefore she can never truly relate to him as anything but an accomplice. Once again, despite the Magistrate’s decent nature, his interactions with the barbarian woman make it clear that he cannot deny his previous ties to the Empire or his partial culpability for the Empire’s actions.
This leads him to his quest for understanding of Colonel Joll and the Empire soldiers themselves. After the Colonel’s “interrogations,” for example, the Magistrate wonders: “Looking at him I wonder how he felt the very first time: did he … shudder even a little to know that at that instant he was trespassing into the forbidden? I find myself wondering too whether he has a private ritual of purification, carried out behind closed doors, to enable him to return and break bread with other men” (12). The Magistrate here exhibits his own humanity through his examination of Colonel Joll’s lack of it. Here, via the Magistrate’s words, Coetzee voices the thoughts of anyone who reads about or bears witness to these kinds of cruel acts. How can they do it? How can they live with themselves? By using the Magistrate to voice these questions, Coetzee questions all inhumane regimes, including Apartheid.
Work Cited
Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. United States: Penguin Books, 1982. Print.
Keli, you have mentioned some interesting ideas. You have said that the Magistrate “learns more about himself than her [the barbarian woman] in the process of trying to help her." I am definitely on the same page as you. While he is reading the scars on her body, the Magistrate is able to metaphorically witness the torture that she has gone through. He realizes, unconsciously, that the colonizers are wrong for torturing the barbarians. With this reading, the Magistrate examines himself and realizes that he wants to be the voice. He wants to stand up for the barbarians because he cannot believe that these men are being treated as animals. Basically, he is learning that unconsciously, he is “understanding the other,” meaning that the “self” and the “other” coincide. The only problem with understanding and being the voice of the "other" is that the Magistrate is the “self.” He is actually a part of the civilization that has caused the barbarian woman’s pain. He is part of this same civilization that is acting as though they are barbarians themselves. Here is the dilemma he is facing: continue to sit back, have this private affair with a barbarian and let the world go on as it is, or to speak up and express to the Empire the wrong they are doing in order to defend the barbarians. Even though he is just one person, the Magistrate decides to speak up for the barbarians. In reality, the Magistrate is only bearing witness to what happened and is expressing only what he sees.
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