Waiting for the Barbarians: An Immersion into the Dream World

In the novel Waiting for the Barbarians, dreams play a prime component in the deliverance of the narrator’s fears, hopes, and desires. We can observe such dreams through a Freudian lens, in an attempt to understand the repression of his staggering emotions.  Freud asserts that “ [dreams like literature] displace unconscious desires, drives and motives into imagery  that might bear no resemblance to its origin but that nonetheless permits it to achieve release or expression” (Rivkin 390). In the novel, the narrator, who presents himself to be the only person among other soldiers who demonstrates empathy for the imprisoned, finds himself trapped by his own inner consciousness. The manifest content behind some dreams demonstrates a sense of physical incompleteness and animalistic characteristics. The latent content, that information which is not directly revealed to the narrator, explores a possible meaning to the dreams and explores the metaphorical castration of a group of people referred to as the barbarians. The ideals behind that castration can be representative of the narrator’s repressed fears or anger for the injustices committed by the soldiers. There are various specific dream descriptions throughout the novel, but I will focus on just two.

                Time after time, the narrator dreams of snow and a young child whose face is not clearly shown. Such visions, which are manifested within his memory trouble him and cause him to continuously wake up every night. As the narrator vividly illustrates, “The face I see is blank, featureless; it is the face of an embryo or a tiny whale; it is not a face at all but another part of the human body that bulges under the skin” (42). Clearly, the narrator is troubled by this child he could not identify; the only aspect that can help him look at the child is replaced by a vision of emptiness and animalistic features that remove them farther away from “the normal” or the “accepted.” The narrator who is himself a magistrate, understands the power dynamics between himself, the soldiers and the most remote of civilizations in their eyes, the barbarians.  In this case, “normality” or “acceptance” is thus defined not by the fact that barbarians have arms, legs, and all other characteristics that are attributed to human beings, but by the savage like features that characterize them as the “other,” the not-nearly human savage.  In reference to his dream, not being able to identify the child might be a representation of his inability to understand the cruel doings of the soldiers who had violently attacked the prisoners. This notion of the “otherness,” ascribed to the barbarians feeds off of the idea that they are savages who do not even deserved to be recognized, as marked by the absence of the child’s face. After realizing that the beggared girl is a barbarian, who had been heavily attacked and who could very well be the face that is ascribed to the child in the narrator’s dreams, the narrator recognizes that she is a representation of the other who is trapped within the reigns of power.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/meyer769/myblog/2011/10/freuds-dream-protection-theory--what-is-the-meaning-of-our-dreams.html

                Another important dream was when the narrator describes, “There are other dreams in which the figure that I call the girl changes shape, sex, size. In one dream there are two shapes that arouse horror in me: massive and blank, they grow and grow till they fill all the space in which I sleep” (101). At this point in the story, the girl has returned with her group of people. The narrator, the magistrate is kept in poor conditions, becoming himself another prisoner. In order to be able to fully analyze the meaning of the dream, it is important to consider the state of mind and the physical conditions under which he is kept: a dark and isolated room with little to no access to clean water and food. He has attempted to forget the memory of the girl who was once her companion as a way to displace the hidden emotions he feels for her. Her image in his mind thus becomes distorted.  The two shapes mentioned also emphasize the power dynamics present in his inner conflict. What grows tremendously now that he has lived in the shoes of the prisoner, is his inner conflict: being the colonizer who must hold and keep power for the sake of his soldiers and to prevent him from being punished, and the colonizer who does not want to be colonizer based on the ideals of those governing around him. These anxieties are thus manifested in his dreams as blank and incomplete vision of the enemy.

Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: The Penguin Group, 1980. Print. 

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. “Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004. Print.

In the Heart of the Country

                The complexity of the J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country is not only apparent through the characters that bind the story together, but also through the structure, language and elements of fiction and reality. When analyzing the structure of the novel, it is important to consider not only the way in which it is separated into numbered sections, the point of view of the narrator, but most importantly, the constant shifts in binary perspectives. These all contribute to Coetzee’s modernistic and  intricate literary approach.

                The novel is separated into 266 different sections, all of which detail a specific scene in Magda, the main character’s, life. As Derek Attridge explains in his article, the numbering of the sections indicate, “we are not to suspend disbelief as we read, that our encounter with human lives, thoughts and feelings is to take place against the background of a constant awareness of their mediation by language, generic and other conventions, and artistic decisions” (663). The reader must recognize the humanistic manner of the events that occur and place focus on the way they are introduced into the novel, moving from a set of events to a realistic literary narrative. Magda narrates the events in her life in a linear manner. Though we become aware of this linear structure and can highlights the chronological events that occur, it is without a doubt that there are missing gaps that are left unanswered. This brings the reader closer to the story, as the reader becomes a witness in Magda’s struggle to feel wanted and loved while simultaneously piecing together the puzzle pieces that formulate the “solitary spinster” she is described to be.

This brings us back to the narrative anomalies structured by the constant shift in the voice of Magda. The narrator, Magda shifts time after time from the first to the third person. The reader becomes entangled in a first person narrative−third person focalizer paradigm, one that provides dualistic points of view. The first person narrator allows for the narration of the events as they occur. The third person focalizer brings the reader into Magda’s consciousness and makes the reader aware of her thoughts and emotions as she narrates the story. On section 13, for instance, Magda states, “The Angel, that is how she is sometimes known, The Angel in black who comes to save the children of the brown folk from their coups and fevers…She needs to be needed. With no one to need her, she is baffled and bewildered” (Coetzee 5). Magna never really identifies herself as the “Dark Angel” she is speaking of, but little clues such as the idea that the “Angel” needs to be needed can clue the reader into assuming that she is speaking about herself. Also, the only other woman that has been presented at this point in the story is the woman Magda’s father brings home. Magda, however, does not know enough to identify this woman as an Angel. Though we are not told directly, we can assume that these are part of her unconscious thoughts and emotions that are circulating in Magda’s mind. The reader thus becomes a literary surgeon who must attempt to extract pieces of information from Magda’s  desolate mind.    

Introduction

This blog was developed in association with English 620JMC at California State University, Northridge.

In dissecting any particular piece of literature, it is important to consider not only the words on the page, but also the social and historical factors influencing it. In such a way, I hope to explore how through the symbolic imagery and powerful choice of words, J.M Coetzee constructs narratives that revolve around his characters while simultaneously posing historical critiques. 

There is a famous phrase that states, “Language is Power.” How might Coetzee thus use and manipulate language to transcend beyond the limitations of social issues such as age, class and gender? How is this apparent in his work? These are questions I also hope to explore in an attempt to learn more about J.M. Coetzee and the mystery that lies behind his serious and reserved demeanor.