This week I read Waiting for the Barbarians and while I found the violence a bit unsettling, I enjoyed the book nevertheless. I am always interested in the way J. M. Coetzee goes about making his character more believably human by putting so much attention into their physicality and sexuality. However, what really caught my eye from the start of this novel was Coetzee's repeated use of the idea of blindness, whether artificial, accidental or metaphorical. In the beginning of the novel the image of blindness we get is that of Colonel Joll and his "two little discs of glass" (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg.1) covering his eyes and the magistrate wondering if he is blind. This image is significant for two reasons. First, it establishes the idea that Colonel Joll has a questionable ability to see things because his eyes are covered, and second it demonstrates the fact that the magistrate and Colonel Joll are from different worlds.
We can see these ideas develop through out the novel. For example, not much further into the chapter a parallel is drawn between the first young prisoner we see and the Magistrate. The magistrate states, "He has probably never seen anything like it before...I mean the eyeglasses. He must think you are a blind man." (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg. 3) On one level this establishes a connection between the young "barbarian" and the magistrate because they both share a certain distance from the Empire and its modernity, which is exactly what Colonel Joll represents. Despite the fact that these are not the words of young prisoner, Joll is being set apart again from the world of the frontier town. There are many soldiers that are stationed there, but no one quite like Colonel Joll. While many soldiers are stationed there they grow accustomed to the ways of the town, Joll does not. Also, we are reminded that Colonel Joll's ability to see is being put into question, that is not his physical ability to see, but his ability to understand, analyze things and view them past the Empire colored lenses he wears. The Magistrate spends much of his time trying to make Colonel Joll and the envoys of the Empire understand that they are going about things the wrong way, but often he finds that they cannot be reasoned with. Their blindness therefore, becomes a handicap to their perception of the situation around them, which will ultimately lead to the erroneous military decision that devastates their armed forces as well as their town. However, it has to be understood that their blindness in no way serves as an excuse for their actions. The fact that Joll and Mandel voluntarily shield themselves against any reasoning or explanations presents the audience with an understanding that they do not wish see things a different way, much in the same way that the Empire wishes to do things its way without yielding to the demands of anybody else. The Magistrate describes Colonel Joll's glasses as "dark shields hiding healthy eyes" (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg.5) putting forth the fact that not only does Joll shield himself from what is truly going on around him, but hiding, much the same way the Magistrate tries to hide from the truth behind their interrogation methods at the beginning of the novel.
The ability to see, to experience things is very important in the novel because really the only person who sees the barbarians is the Magistrate, to everyone else they are only dark shadows in the distance. One cannot understand something that one never sees or experiences and the Empire's blindness to this as embodied by Joll is a comment on this idea. More over it is also a comment on the way the Barbarians become an abstract concept to fear, and the way in which the Empire itself has become an abstract concept beyond the people of the frontier towns who are suppose to be ruled by it.
(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:29 to be double spaced)
