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. 
