University of Cape Town

Power, Fear and Catastrophe in Waiting for the Barbarians

Anora Mladina

ELL3009S - MLDANO001

Dr Wayne Stables

2 October 2017

Anora Mladina

MLDANO001

2 October 2017

Power, Fear and Catastrophe in Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee will be discussed through the frames of power

and fear. The outset of this essay will reveal JM Coetzee’s power over the reader. The dynamics of

power between the narrator, known as the Magistrate, and the barbarian girl will also be analysed;

along with the power dynamics between the Magistrate and Colonel Joll. The differences in power

between these characters gives an opportunity of reading the novel through the frame of fear. Fear

and power play into the third frame through which this novel can be read - that of catastrophe, a

feature allowing the novel to be described as ‘contemporary’.

Besides the power dynamics between the characters within Waiting for the Barbarians, the

novel is in itself an exercise of power by Coetzee over the reader. The power comes from dictating

where the attention of the reader should lie and in the obfuscation of the setting and events from the

novel’s start to it’s conclusion. This assertion of power is seen in the very first paragraph which be-

gins with an “I” and is followed by this unknown ‘I’ stating that he has “never seen anything like it”

(Coetzee 1) Through the use of “I”, the narrator takes command as the lens through which the read-

er will experience the novel. The ensuing description cages the reader into a forced bewilderment of

the “loops of wire” (Coetzee 1) Although modern readers know what sunglasses are, the author ex-

tinguishes the reader’s power of knowing what they know. Instead, they are placed in an experience

that makes sunglasses seem supernatural. The reader is forced to abandon what they know and are

made to think about the glasses in an unusual way, instead of just accepting them as everyday ob-

jects as they usually would. The removal of the reader from their conventional perception of every-

day objects and events, such as seeing a man wear sunglasses, is the removal of the reader’s control
over how they think about certain things. This is an exercise of power on Coetzee’s behalf, as even

though power is generally defined as “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviours of

others or the course of events” ("Power | Definition Of Power In English By Oxford Dictionaries”),

power can inversely be defined as the ability to remove another’s control - in this situation: their

control over their understanding of what they visually perceive.

Moreover, the reader is forced to not only think about things differently but also to be con-

fined in an indefinite search for a tangible understanding of many other things throughout the novel.

Much like the reader is placed in a position to view the the discs as being strange and is made to

join the narrator in wondering whether the ‘other’ is blind, so does the remainder of the novel force

the reader to continually postulate what exactly is going on. An example of this lack of clarity is

how the reader is aware of “a fort on the frontier” (Coetzee 5) as being the setting for this novel but

no further perspicuous explanations arrive as to the time period and country. Scholars have previ-

ously noted how this “locality is obscure” (McDonald) The reader’s inability to uncover any addi-

tional information about the locality without Coetzee penning it, leaves the reader powerless in try-

ing to clearly understand where the events of this novel unfold.

This powerlessness is mirrored in the scope of contemporary literature. Following two world

wars, there was a prevailing sense of powerlessness. A “psychic exhaustion” (Padley) dominated

people who experienced the horrors of war. As a catastrophe is an event that would lead to this psy-

chic exhaustion, a sense of powerlessness can in itself be viewed as a catastrophe. The catastrophic

atrocities from 1914 to 1945 violated both soldiers and civilians perceptions of a normal, violence-

free life which they would have lived were it not for the first and second world war. Their control

over experiencing their daily activities as they normally would was removed by the necessity to

take on war-time related responsibilities in a violent, precarious world; just as the reader’s control

over how they would normally read and perceive subjects is removed by the necessity to perceive

what the narrator perceives and to cohabit an uncertain world with the author.
 Alternatively, this manipulation of perception could be an attempt by Coetzee to relay the

uncertainty he himself may have experienced during the writing of the novel. In an interview con-

ducted by Wim Kayer, Coetzee speaks about how the novel is for him a way of grasping the world.

It is possible then that Coetzee is not forcing the reader to feel uncertain but rather is inviting the

reader to share in his own uncertainty. By making the introduction to the novel unclear and confus-

ing, the author enables the reader to share in these feelings herewith mentioned. Instead of Coetzee

exerting power over the reader, the reader and the author share in a certain powerlessness. The

characters within the novel serve to reinforce the frames of power and powerlessness, as well as that

of fear which arises as a result of these dynamics.

This uncertain world, akin to the uncertain environment of war where every moment is

weighted by a sense of impending violence, is catastrophic in the level of fear it creates in the lives

of the people who find themselves in said environment. The setting of Waiting for the Barbarians is

not the fully fledged war of 1939-1945, but it is sufficiently stress-inducing for the narrator to dub it

“the empire of pain” (Coetzee 23) The same sense of inescapable doom that people during the

world wars would have experienced is akin to the Magistrate’s rumination on the same topic with

his thought on how “the jackal rips out the hare’s bowels, but the world rolls on” (Coetzee 23) With

his holding of the magisterial position, he has administrative power and as such should feel power-

ful. However, he does not truly influence the world around him ie. the world rolls on and he is

therefore not in control of nor does he have power over his environment.

He seeks escape from his daily routine in the form of intercourse with “a girl of

twenty” (Coetzee 23) A woman many years his junior can offer him the kind of solace that he him-

self cannot feel independently and therefore the young woman holds a certain amount of power

over him.
 The barbarian girl is only the first intimate form of caretaking in which the Magistrate has

participated in. Earlier in the novel, he provides food to ‘natives’ in the town. He describes them as

being “utterly seduced by the free and plentiful food” (Coetzee 19) Their liking of the meals pro-

vides the Magistrate with a certain power over them as its appeal served as leverage, with the capa-

bility to “lure them out” (Coetzee 19) The Magistrate uses his power to feed them and it is therefore

assumed that he has the power to withhold provisions. This is, however, revealed to be untrue as a

certain fear grows within the Magistrate that he will have “a race of beggars on [his] hands” be-

cause of the food he has made available to them (Coetzee 19) For him to fear their return, there

needs to exist a certain amount of powerlessness on his behalf in not giving them more food. A

greater power thereby reveals itself to the reader- that of the Magistrate’s conscience.

In reading Waiting for the Barbarians through the frame of both power and fear - whether

the Magistrate and Colonel Joll have consciences or act on their moral sense comes into question.

The Magistrate’s conscience seems active in that he recognises that “civilization entailed the cor-

ruption of barbarian virtues and creation of a dependent people” (Coetzee 38) He sees the power

held by the Empire over the barbarians in introducing foreign desirable goods to them and from

then onwards the Magistrate himself holds the power of whether or not to regale them with said

goods. His power does not come without guilt as he admits that because of the immorality of this

power he is therefore “opposed to civilisation” (Coetzee 38) The question of whether he acts in a

manner aligned to his morals at first seems to be answered by the Magistrate himself in the affirma-

tive as he says that he bases his administration upon his opposition to the ‘civilization’ With this

sentiment he places himself on a moral high ground and it is this self-righteousness that feeds his

power as the man in charge of administrative conduct on the frontier. Put otherwise - he feels the

administrative power of controlling the townspeople and the allowance of resources to the barbar-

ians, as well as experiencing an inner power of placing himslef above the small-mindedness of
townspeople with their “litany of prejudice” (Coetzee 38) as he is able to recognise the corruption

of the empire and sympathise with the barbarians.

Within this power, powerlessness is too felt by the Magistrate. Despite acknowledging the

corruptness of the empire - he succumbs to immoral acts in taking in a barbarian girl who does not

necessarily want to be with him. The reader knows she does not enjoy the time spent with him as

when she is returned home she states that she does “not want to go back to” (Coetzee 71) the fron-

tier. It can therefore be surmised that he is powerless in resisting his desire for the barbarian girl,

even though the desire is not reciprocal. This desire is not necessarily sexual, as for the majority of

their time spent together he spends his time washing and caressing her. He does not feel a ‘sexual

power’ or the need to control the barbarian girl intimately ie. assert his sexual dominance. The ab-

sence of this kind of power is an additional powerlessness to that of not acting in accordance with

his conscience dictating that the barbarians should not be taken advantage of, sexually or otherwise.

A possible explanation for the Magistrate’s care of the barbarian girl is that he fears he is

vicariously responsible for her being crippled and near-blinded. It is true that he himself did not par-

take in her torture or in the torture of other barbarians but he did not intervene. He cannot change

the fact that he did not prevent her mutilation so the act of caring for her may be simply an act

spurred on by sympathy or it may be an act of redemption spurred on by his conscience. Through

redeeming himself, he can remount the moral high ground which previously offered him the power

of self-righteousness.

Two kinds of personality have been drawn from the trait of self-righteousness - the arrogant

and the insecure, both fearing being controlled by others (Falbo and Shepperd 145-157) The Magis-

trate fits the descriptor of insecurely self-righteous as he is insecure and in need of affection from

the woman he pays to sleep with him, as is seen when he embraces her “with gratitude” (Coetzee

22) The power in this relationship is dictated by money owned by the Magistrate controlling the

woman so as to lead to them sleeping together. This dynamic is not present between the Magistrate
and the barbarian girl as he does not pay her but she still feels powerless in being able to refuse him

his advances. There is a sinister power play between the Magistrate and the girl as he does not sleep

with her for pleasure as he does with the other woman, but rather admits that to care for her is to

“use her… in this foreign way” (Coetzee 30) This shows that the Magistrate’s actions go beyond

redeeming himself by helping her. Instead, it is a selfish utilisation of her body to regain a loss of

power he had during the tortures. Where he was not in control when Colonel Joll took over and

conducted her torture, now he conducts “the ritual of the washing” (Coetzee 30) and is once again

in power over what happens to the barbarian girl.

Through taking the barbarian girl in and caring for her after she has experienced pain at the

hands of the torturer, the catastrophe that is torture during wartime is brought to mind. As a piece of

contemporary literature, Coetzee has said that the novel is a way of “grasping the world as it is…

it’s disorder” (DutchTV) Beyond this, he is of the opinion that the novel is also used to tame “it’s

wildness” (DutchTV) There is a comparison to be made between the author taming the wild, chaot-

ic and disorderly world by neatly writing words to form a story and the Magistrate taming the bar-

barian girl by bringing her into his home, in a decision akin to taming the wild fox he brought to

live with them. This taming could be the Magistrate’s attempt in understanding the barbarian girl, as

he presses her to find out what did “they do to [her]” (Coetzee 31) Coetzee reestablished his power

in being able to understand why torture would take place through establishing “one’s own authori-

ty… to imagine torture and death on one’s own terms” (Gallagher and Coetzee 277) The Magistrate

regains control over the situation in his town by inquiring of her what happened during her torture

so that he too can imagine her torture and thereby regain power over her situation.

The Magistrate eventually returns the girl home and is then arrested upon reentering the

frontier for having deserted his post and for “treasonously consorting” (Cotzee 77) with the barbar-

ian girl. Once again, he loses power under the command of Colonel Joll. He is powerless in being

able to change his circumstances as a prisoner and resorts to “biding [his] time till this phase of his-
tory grinds past and the frontier returns to its old somnolence” (Coetzee 95) It seems that the in-

evitability of his situation is what lourdes greater power over the magistrate’s wellbeing during im-

prisonment, rather than the power the Colonel has over him. Indeed, the Magistrate ruminates that

he finds “it hard to hate him in return” (Coetzee 84) The Magistrate feels the power of time spent in

imprisonment and the powerlessness that comes with not being able to escape for quite some time -

to be greater then the power Colonel Joll holds as the instructor of his imprisonment, which he

breaks when succeeding in retrieving a key from the kitchen that matches the lock of his cell. The

dynamic between the Magistrate and Colonel Joll does constitute different powers, namely the

powerlessly imprisoned magistrate versus the in-power commander Colonel Joll; as well as the

power of self-righteousness the Magistrate feels over Colonel Joll’s immoral torture of the barbarian

girl.

The power Coetzee holds over the reader manifests itself in his ability to control where the

reader’s focus is directed, as well as in manipulating their perceptions. He maintains his power

through writing in a manner which obfuscates the reader and the reader is rendered powerless in

trying to understand with clarity the exact setting in the novel. This powerlessness felt in not being

able to understand the environment the reader finds themselves in is reflected in the powerlessness

felt by people post world war 1 and world war 2 in the face of wartime devastation and catastrophe.

This catastrophe of war and the torture often occurring therewith is an aspect which Coetzee strug-

gles to grasp and through his writing, he shares this powerlessness of not being able to understand

horrific events with the reader. Beyond the author-reader dynamic, the Magistrate exhibits fluctua-

tions between maintaining a power through his official position and as a product of his care-taking

of he barbarians, his conscience and his resulting self-righteousness. However, he also feels power-

lessness in the face of time and inevitability, as well as in his more tangible relationships with

women - specifically the barbarian girl and the girl he pays to sleep with. He is powerless when it

comes to resisting his need to spend time with these woman. His care for the barbarian girl is addi-
tionally not only an inability to resist spending time with her but also an act of redemption as he

fears he should have done more to prevent her eventual crippling. He regains power through caring

for her. His care is also an attempt to tame her, just as Coetzee tames his view of the world into the

written words of the contemporary novel. Finally, the Magistrate’s power is once again removed in

Colonel Joll arresting him but once again it is time and inevitability which holds the greatest power

over the Magistrate.

 References

DutchTV. JM Coetzee On Writing, Followed By Reading In Dutch (Subtitled) From ‘Ijzertijd’(Age

Of Iron), 2000. 2017. Web. 28 Sept. 2017.

Coetzee, J. M. Waiting For The Barbarians. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

Falbo, Toni, and James A Shepperd. "Self-Righteousness: Cognitive, Power, And Religious Charac-
teristics." Journal of Research in Personality 20.2 (1986): 145-157. Web.

Gallagher, Susan Van Zanten, and J. M. Coetzee. "Torture And The Novel: J. M. Coetzee's "Waiting
For The Barbarians"." Contemporary Literature 29.2 (1988): 277. Web.

McDonald, P. D. "The Writer, the Critic, and the Censor: J.M. Coetzee and the Question of Litera-
ture." Book History, vol. 7 no. 1, 2004, pp. 285-302. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/bh.2004.0021

Padley, Steve. Key Concepts In Contemporary Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Print.

"Power | Definition Of Power In English By Oxford Dictionaries." Oxford Dictionaries | English.

N.p., 2017. Web. 28 Sept. 2017.