Humanity Prevails in Waiting for the Barbarians

Authors consistently utilize human nature as a theme in their literature, usually to make a statement about human society. At this point in the novel, J. M. Coetzee’s message about humanity is not yet apparent, except in his obvious statement about torture—that it is morally and unjustifiably wrong—; however, he creates three distinct characters that, by the end of chapter three, offer very different perspectives on the novel’s circumstances and events. J. M. Coetzee’s allegorical novel Waiting for the Barbarians conducts a methodical examination of human nature in its three primary characters: the blind barbarian girl, Colonel Joll, and the Magistrate.

Colonel Joll is the cruel, heartless, and tyrannical representative from the Empire’s capital. Joll is primarily noted for his intense torture treatment toward barbarian prisoners to discover the “truth.” Our first image of Joll is in the very first pages of the novel when he wears his sunglasses. The scene dramatically introduces him as a wicked man who hides behind the sunglasses’ shades to avoid revealing his inner thoughts and emotions. However, his cruelty has no bounds, evident by his torture methods. In fact, we readers are forced to question the validity of this "truth" that Joll is trying to extract from his victims. Joll is clearly the Magistrate's antagonist, but he is only a microcosmic entity from the macrocosmic Empire, which represents a much larger, stronger, and more formidable opposition.

The blind girl is the most participatory barbarian in the novel so far, as she and the Magistrate develop a uniquely close yet indefinable relationship. She is a product of Joll’s and the Empire’s ruthless attempts to attain indescribable power. We have not met an entire barbarian society yet, but the girl offers the best initial insight and perspective of the barbarians. She is simple, plain, and direct, and she hates long, deep, and meaningful conversations. The girl, as well, is a mysterious and troubling force in the eyes of the Magistrate, who ends up having to evaluate his feelings for her.

The Magistrate, also the narrator of the story, is the most complex of the characters as he struggles to determine the morality and his opinions of the situations that he faces, particularly in his encounters with Colonel Joll and the blind barbarian girl. The first of these ethical dilemmas is torture. The Magistrate first encounters torture when the townspeople hear the barbarian uncle and nephew cry out during their suggested torture in the very beginning of the story, and again when the Magistrate interrogates the attending guard. The Magistrate’s interrogation of the guard completely reveals to us what occurred inside the room. In his debates and inward speculation over torture, the Magistrate concludes that torture is an abominable practice that clearly destroys people’s lives, for example the blind barbarian girl. As for the girl, the Magistrate struggles with this intense desire to protect her and care for her—he seems to think that protecting her has to include having sexual relations with her as well—as well as the lack of sexual attraction that he feels for her. While he never really comes to a solid conclusion about his feelings for her, he becomes a character that we feel sympathy for because he is essentially trying to discover what it means to be human, a feeling that seems to be nonexistent and has yet to be realized.

The novel clearly focuses on the issues that the Magistrate has encountered since the arrival of Colonel Joll: torture and sex. However, it is also obvious that the Magistrate’s story is far from complete. I have a mixture of eagerness and apprehension as I prepare to read the upcoming chapters in this wonderfully developed novel that seeks to explore variations of human nature and what it means to be human.
(633)

The Africans' Identity Crisis: Hegel vs. Darwin

“The African Character” by G. W. F. Hegel (1830), p. 208-12
• The African is the “natural man in his completely wild and untamed state” (208), who does not realize that there is a higher power greater than him is. Africans instead practice sorcery, which “exhibits man as the highest power” and gives them “control” over the natural elements, such as rain and storm (209).
• Consequently, Africans have contempt for humanity because there is nothing above them to revere. Furthermore, they have no knowledge of the human soul’s immortality.
• The disrespect for human life and soul manifests itself in political tyranny/constitution, cannibalism, interracial slavery—parents and children sell one another for survival, suggesting instinctual, or animalistic, tendencies—, polygamy, and African fanaticism.
• In terms of slavery, Hegel contends that African enslavement under European control has been essential for “the increase of human feeling among the Negroes” (212). Nonetheless, Hegel insists that slavery is unjust but also that it should be abolished slowly rather than instantly, because slavery needs to “mature” the Africans.

“On the Races of Man” by Charles Darwin (1871), p. 212-17
• There are two schools of anthropologists over the debate of the number of humankind’s species: monogenists and polygenists—“those who believe that human beings descend from a single origin (Darwin’s view that humans evolved from apes) or from many different species.
• Apparently, polygenists are just wrong, because they are rejecting the notions of evolution, thus saying that species, in this case different forms of man, are separate creations, which in turn forces them to decide what forms of man will be considered species. However, “it is a hopeless endeavor to decide this point, until some definition of the term ‘species’ is generally accepted” (213), which apparently is impossible to do.
• On the other hand, monogenists agree despite the superficial aspects of each existing race of man, all the races must come from the same “primitive stock” because there numerous similarities found in the entire human structure across racial lines, including Africans and Europeans.
• Essentially, Africans and Europeans are very alike in habits, dispositions, and inventive or mental powers. Differences do exist manifested in languages, behaviors, and qualities of life.
• Differences between the various races cannot be accounted for by different conditions of life, by evolutionary changes in body—both body parts and physical aspects.

The Completion of the Compson Downfall

The Sound and the Fury’s final section displays the final moments before the Compson’s inevitable downfall. From Quentin’s escape to Mother’s insanity to Jason’s neurotic pursuit, the narrator describes the deterioration of each Compson’s behavior. Furthermore, there is no possible way for the Compsons to carry on their name with a suitable male heir—that is, one who is emotionally or mentally stable. Benjy is, well, he’s Benjy—a mentally challenged young man who is completely unfit to continue the family tree—; Quentin was extremely neurotic and haunted by Caddy’s lost innocence and has already committed suicide by the story’s end; and Jason is far too angry to settle down with a wife and bear children. The three disturbed young men are unable to continue the family’s legacy, and the family is slowly destroying itself from the inside out. The novel starts and ends with Benjy. In the beginning, we are completely unaware of how twisted and dysfunctional each Compson is, but in the end, we see that there is little to no hope for the Compson family. Any bright future that the family once had vanishes with Quentin’s ultimate, abrupt departure. (193)