Destroying Language Through Pain & Suffering Part 1: Introduction

Since I have started this blog I have become very interested in J. M. Coetzee and this has transformed into a research paper. The four posts below, and this one, are the result of my research on Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians, and it explores the concepts of pain, suffering, and the Other. The novel struck me from the first time I read it earlier in the year, and in my mind I always wanted to do something more with it. I hope my research is useful for those who are seeking to understand more about Coetzee and his work.

Destroying Language Through Pain and Suffering: An Analysis of J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the

Barbarians

 

         J. M. Coetzee in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians deals with the issue of torture and how difficult it is to represent it for both a writer, and the tortured victim. In Coetzee's novel the human body appears as a metaphor for a body of text. Michael Valdez Moses suggest that in one of Coetzee's more recent works, Elizabeth Costello, the concept of the body works as a bridging device between the reader and the novel. Something similar can be seen in Waiting for the Barbarians. There is a slight difference, however, because the magistrate utilizes the barbarian girl's scarred body as both a bridging device between his world and hers, and as the foundation for a new world. The magistrate seeks comfort in the girl because his reality is shattered and overtaken by a new world of pain and torture brought in by Colonel Joll.

Destroying Language Through Pain & Suffering Part 2

 Destruction of Reality & the Search for a New World

         The magistrate is made to question his place in the Empire because he has always thought himself as not just a servant of it, but as part of it. However, when Colonel Joll begins with his “investigations” the magistrate realizes that without having actually tortured any of the prisoners himself, he has taken part in the dark affairs of the Empire and cannot fathom the idea. After the magistrate sees Joll off to his expedition he states, “[s]o I ride back, relieved of my burden and happy to be alone again in a world I know and understand.” (Coetzee 15) After Joll has brought in the elements of pain and torture in to the world of the magistrate his world is changed, and he is taken out of his element, finding himself questioning how he should act. His duty to the Empire and his duty to mankind come into conflict in his mind because he has never previously had to make those types of choices.

Destroying Language Through Pain & Suffering Part 3

The Obstacles of Otherness: The Female Other

         It is important to note that one of the most significant obstacles between his understand of the girl is his inability to understand how he should view the girl. Should he look to her as a maternal deity/martyr figure who is to be worshiped, or as a mistress that needs to be opened and used up in order to arrive at her core. True, the barbarian girl symbolizes pain and suffering, but she is also female a fact that the magistrate is unable to ignore.

Destroying Language Through Pain & Suffering Part 4

The Obstacles of Otherness: The Uncivilized Other

         Another reason why the barbarian girl remains in the subverted position of the other is because as Barbara Eckstein states, “As a man of the 'first world,' [the magistrate] is accustomed to assigning meaning to sentient signs, particularly signs of the (barbarian) 'third world.' He can make presence or absence as he chooses.” (87) It is because the magistrate is unable to ignore the difference of “first world” and “third world” that he places yet another obstacle between himself and the girl.

Destroying Language Through Pain & Suffering Part 5

The Obstacles of Otherness: Experience vs Ignorance

        Yet, the concept of experience, and more specifically the experience of pain, is something that also presents complications for the magistrate in his search for meaning in the story of the barbarian girl. Elaine Scarry in her text, The Body in Pain, suggests that the pain of someone else is something unknowable, “one might almost appear to be speaking about two wholly distinct order of events.” (4) The magistrate experiences something similar in the text. As mentioned previously he is alienated from being a participant in the process of torture, and therefore does not have experiences on which to draw on when he first approaches the girl. The magistrate constantly asks her to tell him about what her torturers did, but it is not just facts that he is after. The magistrate seeks much more than that, what he is truly trying to do is find her deepest and most secret feelings, something Scarry tells us is unattainable.