Deterioration- An Essay on J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

Deterioration

Emotions are complex. They are created because of a strong feeling towards someone or something. They also cause empathy among human beings. These emotions are evident in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Waiting for the Barbarians. Coetzee uses the human body to entice the reader through the emotions of sex, pain, survival, and health in order to make the reader empathize with the novel’s protagonist, the Magistrate. Coetzee also demonstrates a distinct parallel between the deterioration of the Magistrate and the Empire. The usages of sex during the beginning stages of the novel represent the Empire and the Magistrate during prosperous times. However, these pleasurable feelings slowly diminished and turned into a whirlwind of desperate emotions in order to survive for both the Empire and the Magistrate. As the novel unfolds, so does the physical deterioration of the Magistrate. These emotions and feelings of sex, pain, survival, and health can trigger a past event that the reader has, or a genuine care in which the reader wants to dive into the novel and help out the protagonist in Waiting for the Barbarians. This is shown through Coetzee’s utilization of his excellent usage of descriptive imagery in order to reach out to the reader’s emotions in order to enhance the overall message of human compassion in the book.

One of the first emotions that are used in Waiting for the Barbarians relates to sex and affection. The majority of people believe that it is beneficial to have a partner in which they can get love and affection from. This is also evident in the novel because the Magistrate develops a craving towards this barbarian woman. He is extremely compassionate as first shown in their initial meeting. The Magistrate then gets into a routine with her and is known as their evening ritual:

First comes the ritual of the washing, for which she is now naked. I wash her feet, as before, her legs, her buttocks. My soapy hand travels between her thighs, incuriously, I find. She raises her arms while I wash her armpits. I wash her belly, her breasts. I push her hair aside and wash her neck, her throat. She is patient. I rinse and dry her. She lies on the bed and I rub her body with almond oil. I close my eyes and lose myself in the rhythm of the rubbing, while the fire, piled high, roars in the grate. (Coetzee 30)

This description of the Magistrate’s and the barbarian’s woman’s intimacy can target the readers curiosity as well as ones most inner deep desires. The romanticism of this scene shows how Coetzee can use words to create the most picture-perfect scenes. Although this ritual seems to be fool-proof for sex, the Magistrate has certain masculinity issues, “She undresses and lies down, waiting for my inexplicable attentions. Perhaps I sit beside her stroking her body, waiting for a flush of blood that never truly comes” (Coetzee 33). Also this is explained because of his age, “When I was young the mere smell of a woman would arouse me; now it is evidently only the sweetest, youngest, the newest who have that power” (Coetzee 46). The Magistrate’s inability to fulfill his fantasy is toying with his emotions. For this reason, he decides to venture on a journey to send her back to her people. This part of the novel is depicted beautifully by Coetzee because the reader really gets a firm understanding of the Magistrate’s inner-most thoughts and conflicts. At this point in the novel the Magistrate is at his most prosperous time. There is irony in this situation because the Magistrate is a respectable, noble man, however he is infatuated with the thought of this scarred, and broken barbarian woman. This woman who he brings into his life is the actual cause of the deterioration of his job, life, and physical health.

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The Magistrate’s infatuation with the barbarian woman was also affecting the Empire. This adds to the parallelism between the Magistrate and the Empire. As the Magistrate became more and more involved with the barbarian woman, he started to become more and more disinvolved with his job. He started to become fascinated with how the barbarians were treated and how they were tortured. “One after another I interview those men who were on duty while the prisoners were being questioned…A second time I interview the two guards who were on duty in the yard” (Coetzee 35-36). The Magistrate would assign his employees to discover what happened to the barbarian woman’s father, as well as asking how they created the scars on the rest of the barbarians. Besides that, the Magistrate also involved his job at the Empire with the barbarian woman. This happens when the Magistrate decides to set forth on a journey to return her to her own people. The parallelism exists here because this was the beginning of the Magistrate’s downfall, just as much as it was the beginning of the end for the Empire.

Moreover, Coetzee uses the next three emotions hand in hand, such as pain, survival, and health in order to portray the parallelism as well as make the readers empathize with the Magistrate. These three emotions, as well as the way Coetzee applies them, can make the reader cringe when described of the torture that was instilled in the barbarians and the Magistrate. The barbarian woman in which the Magistrate was so fond over had a deficiency in her sight because of one of the torturing techniques. She states, “It was a fork, a kind of fork with only two teeth. There were little knobs on the teeth to make them blunt. They put it in the coals till it was hot, then they touched you with it, to burn you” (Coetzee 41). These techniques were viewed as a tool in the interrogations of the barbarians in order for the Empire to find where their whereabouts were. These “tools” are unnecessary, especially because the barbarians that were captured were not even barbarians but plain nomads and fisherman. As appalling as that may seem there was also other brutal treatments of the barbarians that Coetzee so accurately and violently portrays:

The soldiers use stout green cane staves, bringing them down with the heavy slapping sounds of washing-paddles, raising red welts on the prisoners’ backs and buttocks… The black charcoal and ochre dust begin to run with sweat and blood. The game, I see, is to beat them till their backs are washed clean. (Coetzee 105)

The pain in these two scenes is overwhelmingly described by the imagery as well as the atmosphere in which it was written. Coetzee shows the pain in each of the scene but does not come out and directly say it which makes the novel all the better. In both of these two torturing scenes the Magistrate becomes obsessed with the thought and concept of this pain. It has already been noted that the Magistrate kept the barbarian woman around because of her tainted body, but even when the other barbarians are being tortured the Magistrate has the yearning to scream out and try to stop the unnecessary brutality. This is because the Magistrate has sympathy for these barbarians, however the cruelty towards the barbarians is just a mere foreshadow to the uncivilized and vulgar manner in which the Magistrate gets treated.

Pain is not the only horrid emotion that is depicted throughout the novel because pain is almost always associated with survival. An example of this is when the Magistrate is on his journey to bring the barbarian woman back to her tribe they get caught in a terrible storm in the desert. The desert provides very little resources to use in their time of need:

For five hours we huddle behind the piled firewood and the horses while the wind lashes us with snow, ice, rain, sand, grit. We ache with cold to our very bones. The flanks of the horses, turned to the wind, are caked with ice. We press together, man and beast, sharing our warmth, trying to endure. (Coetzee 67)

However throughout that journey that was not the only hardship that they encountered. The crew also slaughtered a horse for food because beans and flourcakes were just not enough for them. That journey shows how a human can survive in the most horrific conditions; however the next type of survival is completely different. The Magistrate had to survive living in isolation, with nothing but a bucket and three holes on the wall to look at day after day. One of the worst conditions consisted of the Magistrate lying, “in the reek of old vomit obsessed with the thought of water. I have had nothing to drink for two days,” (Coetzee 115). This emotion of human survival correlates with the health of the individual. The healthier one is the more that person would want to live. However it is when one person’s the health worsens, and when there are hardships to overcome where the survival of the individual depends on the mentality of that individual. In other words, as his health deteriorates the Magistrate’s fixation on necessities grows. Meanwhile, his care about society, the Empire, and life outside of his cell also diminishes. This is because the Magistrate was barely living throughout the times of him being locked away because his health was slowly deteriorating. He could not even do basic bodily functions without dealing with pain:

Under the monotonous regimen of soup and porridge and tea, it has become an agony for me to move by bowels. I hesitate for days feeling stiff and bloated before I can bring myself to squat over the pail and endure the stabs of pain, the tearing of tissues that accompany these evacuations. (Coetzee 85)

The Magistrate is placed in complete isolation in which he has to deal with surviving for himself. He deals with surviving from his very own self-destruction. One can easily self-destruct in isolation by losing his/her personality or just becoming sick of dealing with the conditions. However, the Magistrate manages to keep his sanity despite this revolting stench which happens to be himself, “I smell of shit. I am not permitted to wash. The flies follow me everywhere, circling around the appetizing sore on my cheek, alighting if I stand still for a moment,” (Coetzee 116). The Magistrate also had to deal with the knowledge that the people who are doing this to him he once worked for. He got betrayed by his own men, but what makes it even worse to bear is that these men practically demoted him from being a human being. The writing and expressing of all the human emotions by Coetzee makes us emphasize with the barbarians instead of the townspeople. This human demotion was presented by Coetzee through the unmanageable living conditions, lack of water and necessary nutrients, as well as the embarrassing treatment that the Magistrate had to endure from the soldiers. Moreover, the Empire who was once his previous employer now treats him like an uncivilized wolf.

The Magistrate began as a prominent figure in the Empire, however that image faded away. The first step of the Magistrate’s deterioration was through his want and affection with the barbarian woman. Although the caressing and affection made him sleep better at night, this eventually was the beginning of the end. This was relevant because of the journey that the Magistrate and his men had to take in order to reunite her with her tribe. This is the Magistrate’s second step of the deterioration. This expedition caused the death of two horses, and also presented the crew with a myriad of hardships along the way. It also turned the men he traveled with against him. Finally, his isolation completed both his mental and physical deterioration. The Magistrate had to try to not lose his sanity while maintaining strength to want to survive till the next day. This deterioration also parallels with the Empire.

Meanwhile, the Magistrate was not the only person that was deteriorating because the Empire was too. The barbarians started to exploit the Empire’s weaknesses through sneak attacks and a type of what we know today as guerilla warfare:

The barbarians come out at night. Before darkness falls the last goat must be brought in, the gates barred, a watch set in every lookout to call the hours…The barbarians have dug a tunnel under the walls, people say; they come and go as they please, take what they like; no one is safe any longer. The farmers still till the fields, but they go out in bands, never singly. They work without heart: the barbarians are only waiting for the crops to be established, they say, before they flood the fields again. (Coetzee 122)

The barbarians created a sense of fear in every settler to the point where they just assume the course of actions in which the barbarians are going to take. There are multiple rumors surrounding the barbarians about how they enter, what they do, and what they are going to do and this panic just adds on to the overwhelming fear. The lack of an army does not aid in these hardships.

The imagery that was imposed throughout the novel makes the reader want to empathize with the Magistrate for all the hardships that he endures. The extreme writing and situations that occur throughout the novel help enhance the overall message because it entices the reader to read more. Coetzee uses the imagery to appeal towards the specific emotions dealing with sex, pain, survival, and the health of the individuals. These emotions help the reader identify with the overall motifs that are happening throughout the book such as the deterioration of both the Magistrate and the Empire.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.