Name :- Gohil Devangiba Aniruddhsinh

Roll No. :- 14

Email Id :-

devangibagohil786@gmail.com

Paper No. :- 14 (The African Literature)

Topic :- Literary Analysis Of “The

Waiting For Barbarians”

Submitted To :- Department Of English

M.K.B.University

J. M. Coetzee

John Maxwell CoetzeeBorn in South Africa, 1940Anti-apartheid, wrote a lot on the subject of apartheid.animal rights activistPostmodernist, clinical writingA series of (completely) fictional autobiographies, Summertime (2009)The Lives of Animals (1999)Won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Jerusalem Prize, two Booker Prizes, three CNA Prizes, and the Prix Femina Etranger

Waiting for the Barbrians by C. P. Cavafy

A poem whose title Coetzee took for his novel.

An unnamed empire waits, ready to welcome, or,

rather, face the barbarians and "dazzle" them.

However, the barbarians don't come.

"Now what's going to happen to us without

barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.“

the issue of the "other" as a vehicle to characterize

the "self“

described as "an apt description of any state that

needs enemies, real or imaginary, as a perpetual

excuse"

“Waiting For” “Barbarians”the

Fear

Anxiety

Uneasy

Confusion

Savage

Cruel

Ruthless

Brute

Introduction

"Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M.

Coetzee,

This novel by Coetzee sheds light

onto the imperialism and moral flaws of

political powers.

The story of "Waiting for the

Barbarians" focuses on the Magistrate's

thoughts as he experiences the events of

torture and power by the Empire.

J.M. Coetzee has delivered an entire

new culture and struggle into literature

and has revealed some of the truths of

imperialism internationally.

Character and Analysis

Colonel Joll

Trained to be violent and do whatever it takes to get the prisoners to talkHas the characteristics of a solider: tough, heartless, obedient, apathetic, seriousThe only character with a name, which shows his authority and that he is foreignHe has sunglasses, which show that he is wealthier and not from the frontier

The Magistrate

Waiting to retire, inefficient, and letting his

life pass by

Alone and was living a quiet life

Is unsure of Colonel Joll and his actions

Shows compassion for the boy and tries to help

him

Does not know what to do with this

uncertainty

Needs affection so he turns to the barbarian

girl and the prostitute

Is very awkward when with the girl and

prostitute

The Barbarian Girl

Blinded and wounded

Shows the force and oppression

of the Third Bureau and the

Empire altogether

Her external damage

emphasizes the Magistrate's

internal damage

Her frustration towards the

Magistrate shows how strange

their interactions are

Symbols

The empire

The empires represent power

that doesn't require that

Those who serve it love others but

merely perform duties.

Barbarians Tribes

According to rumors

barbarian tribes have been

arming and the empire

would have to employ

measures to prevent war.

The Blank Page

In the entire course of the novel, with

all the changes that the magistrate goes

through, he is now able to write on the

paper.

Along with the poplar slips, which seem

to tell the barbarian’s history, we can see

the blank slip of paper as the magistrate’s

attempt at relaying a history.

In each of the cases, the magistrate puts

a significance on having his life recorded.

The blank paper is his attempt at at

creating his own history. When at the end

of the novel he cannot bear to write his

own history

The Term “Barbarians"

Imperialism is an important aspect of the novel,

the term "barbarians" or "barbaric" is also

dominate. Depsite the fact that the Empire wants to

influence the land through military and diplomatic

influences, their technique of interrogation towards

that prisoners makes them as much as barbarians as

the real savages.

"Waiting for the Barbarians" is that the

Magistrate is a source of truth, one who witnesses

all of the good and evil of the Empire and the

villagers. He illuminates to the readers that it's not

always about politics, but it is about our true

human nature in a time of crisis; whether we tend

to be barbaric or civilized.