WAITING FOR
BARBARIANS
-J.M. Coetzee
Waiting for the
Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born Nobel
laureate J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin
for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both
the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for
fiction. American composer Philip Glass has also written an opera of the same
name based on the book which premiered in September 2005 in Erfurt, Germany.
The story is narrated in the
first person by the unnamed magistrate of a small colonial town that exists as
the territorial frontier of "the Empire". The Magistrate's rather
peaceful existence comes to an end with the Empire's declaration of a state of
emergency and with the deployment of the Third Bureau—special forces of the
Empire—due to rumors that the area's indigenous people, called
"barbarians" by the colonists, might be preparing to attack the town.
Consequently, the Third Bureau conducts an expedition into the land beyond the
frontier. Led by a sinister Colonel Jolly, the Third Bureau captures a number
of barbarians, brings them back to town, tortures them, kills some of them, and
leaves for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign.
In the meantime, the
Magistrate begins to question the legitimacy of imperialism and personally
nurses a barbarian girl who was left crippled and partly blinded by the Third
Bureau's torturers. The Magistrate has an intimate yet uncertain relationship
with the girl. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a
life-threatening trip through the barren land, during which they have sex, he
succeeds in returning her—finally asking, to no avail, if she will stay with
him—and returns to his own town. The Third Bureau soldiers have reappeared
there and now arrest the Magistrate for having deserted his post and consorting
with "the enemy". Without much possibility of a trial during such
emergency circumstances, the Magistrate remains in a locked cellar for an
indefinite period, experiencing for the first time a near-complete lack of
basic freedoms. He finally acquires a key that allows him to leave the
makeshift jail, but finds that he has no place to escape to and only spends his
time outside the jail scavenging for scraps of food.
Later, Colonel Jolly
triumphantly returns from the wilderness with several barbarian captives and
makes a public spectacle of their torture. Although the crowd is encouraged to
participate in their beatings, the Magistrate bursts onto the scene to stop it,
but is subdued. Taking the Magistrate, a group of soldiers hangs him up by his
arms, culminating his understanding of imperialistic violence in a personal
experience of torture. With the Magistrate's spirit clearly crushed, the
soldiers mockingly let him roam freely through the town, knowing he has nowhere
to go and no longer poses a threat to their mission. The soldiers, however,
begin to flee the town as winter approaches and their campaign against the
barbarians collapses. The Magistrate tries to confront Jolly on his final
return from the wild, but the colonel refuses to speak to him, hastily
abandoning the town with the last of the soldiers. The predominating belief in
the town is that the barbarians intend to invade soon, and although the
soldiers and many civilians have now departed, the Magistrate helps encourage
the remaining townspeople to continue their lives and to prepare for the
winter. There is no sign of the barbarians by the time the season's first snow
falls on the town.
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