Initial Responses to WFB

When I first began reading Waiting for the Barbarians, I didn't like the story so much as I liked the relatively "normal" wrtiting style. After the pretentiousness of Conrad and the stream of consciousness of Faulkner, I was more than ready to encounter a simplistic, straight-forward, plot-driven novel like the one Coetzee writes.

The storyline itself, however, did not grab my interest - at first. Coetzee's Magistrate (the narrator) plays the atypical "white knight", caring for Colonel Joll's prisoners in a motherly fasion. He immediately believes in their innocence, and he grows increasingly hateful of Colonel Joll for his torture tactics, which result in the death of the old prisoner. When the Colonel finally does leave, the Magistrate is relieved to be "alone again in a world [he] know[s] and understand[s]." Unfortunately, after this incident, his world will never be the same again. The visit from Colonel Joll is the first stone tossed by the Empire; by the end of the novel, the outpost has been buried by an empirical avalanche.

I think part of the reason the story did not initially appeal to me was the apparent lack of depth concerning our narrator. At first, he is merely an opposite to the dark forces of the Empire. HIs personality and character are revealed more and more as the novel progresses, and there are sides of him that are positively disturbing. Take, for example, his utterly bizarre relationship with the barbarian girl. When he brought her into his home, I believed he was just being a Good Samaritan. Then, at night, he begins that strange ritual of rubbing her broken ankles and cleaning her legs. This interaction would be similar to that of a lover, but the Magistrate hardly ever considers actually having intercourse with his slave (yes - she is no better than a slave to him, I think). Eventually, he is even repulsed by her. The Magistrate's frequent mood swings and his over-sexuality add to the novel as a whole, because the narrator is no longer just a good man protecting against the Empire - in some senses, he is a barbarian himself. (355)