A Species of Blindness - J.M. Coetzee's Vision of Empire

Narrated with heavy doses of internal monologue and esoteric dreams, the story of Waiting for the Barbarians is ultimately about perspective. There is a way in which reality, in this novel, is an issue of opinion.

Coetzee's novel raises questions about how society, specifically empire, can believe its own stories (lies) about itself and others; how truth becomes fuzzy in the hands of the state; and how individuals are impacted by the psychology of their society.

The conflict in this novel comes in one man's disagreement with the state. Where the individual sees a barbarian population as a group of innocent, comprehensible people, his government describes them as incomprehensible savages who pose an immanent threat.

What is the individual to do?

When the empire begins to torture and imprison barbarians, should he shut his eyes to the injustice? Should he rebel?

Should he choose ignorance or outrage?

Either way, the man will be forced into an isolation that removes him from the life of the town whose inhabitants unflinchingly agree with the empire's decisions.

In the case of this novel, the notions of ignorance and outrage are complicated by the fact that they are illusory. The individual is a citizen of the empire and therefore is implicit in its actions, be they cruel or benevolent. Ignorance is a dream. However, as an individual, the man of conscience is powerless to stop the empire from exerting its will against the barbarians...and against himself.

In the Greek story, Tantalus was punished by temptation. Made to stand in a dark narrow space, grapes hung above his head. When Tantalus stretched upwards to pluck the grapes, water rose about his feet. Ever as he strained upward the water rose, as did the grapes which remained forever out of reach.

When Tantalus grew thirsty and bent down to drink, the water receded, as the grapes had, remaining out of reach.

Desire and disappointment were the constants as Tantalus strove for either of the two impossible satisfactions.

In Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, we are presented with a character similarly trapped. Much like Tantalus, this character's plight takes place both internally and externally. The struggle, ultimately, is one of self-agreement. Far from simple, the conflict quickly becomes complex and the protagonist finds himself enmeshed in a morass of ambiguous motivations.

Waiting for the Barbarians, a slim novel of 150 pages, opens with a rather pastoral view of life in a desert oasis on the frontiers of an unnamed empire.

J. M. Coetzee published this novel in 1980, a time of apartheid in South Africa. Coetzee was heralded as a leading South African voice in the arts for decades, winning the Booker Prize twice as well as a more recent Nobel Prize for literature.

Coetzee's 1980 novel is open to many interpretations, including some that would seem to comment directly on the spurious notions of racial and ethnic superiority that fueled the system of apartheid in South Africa.

However, as a well-crafted, nuanced piece of art, Waiting for the Barbarians is far more suggestive than it is prescriptive.

On the frontier, in this bucolic oasis, we meet a middle-aged local magistrate. He is the only functionary of the town, tasked with keeping records and keeping order. The magistrate enjoys his job and finds that he has plenty of time to pursue personal projects.

He undertakes an excavation of structures, forgotten old homes, that have been covered in sand outside the town walls.

He pursues relations with women decades younger than he is.

He lives a peaceful life.

Within the first few pages of the novel, a man named Colonel Joll arrives in the frontier town from "the capital". He is a servant of the empire to which this town belongs. Joll wears dark glass disks in front of his eyes, never taking them off. He tells the magistrate that he should thank the empire for his bliss and his peace. There would be no peace without the diligence of the empire, defending the frontier with its armies.

The magistrate does not agree.

The empire has left the town alone. It is this lack of diligence that has secured the town's peace - a notion that will be borne out through the story of the novel.

A metaphor is introduced in the character of Colonel Joll - people see what they want to see and they do not see what they choose not to see. Some species of blindness are purely intentional, as demonstrated by Colonel Joll in his dark glasses, a man who holds to an unbending and ignorant view of world.

Joll suggests that the barbarians are gathering and planning an offensive against the empire. These barbarians are desert nomads who are being pushed into the mountains by the expanse of the empire. They have lived in the desert for ages. The people of the town encounter the barbarians to peacefully trade each year before the winter season.

They are a scattered people, indifferent to the empire. The magistrate cannot believe what Colonel Joll says about the barbarians plans to unite and attack. The magistrate cannot believe how pragmatically blind Joll chooses to be.

Against all past evidence, Joll sets out to prove that the barbarians are plotting against the empire. He rounds up several unlucky wanderers in the desert and brings them to town to be tortured.

The magistrate sees what will happen. He shuts himself up in his rooms and closes his ears to the cries of the barbarians as they are beaten, humiliated, and interrogated.

This is the first temptation. The magistrate wants to maintain a sense of separation from the brutality and blindness of the empire by retreating into isolation.

Soon Colonel Joll departs the town. A blind barbarian woman who had been abused by the interrogators is left behind to beg.

Taking her in, the magistrate finds himself attempting to heal the woman in very subtle and often bizarre ways. Coetzee's protagonist realizes that he does not know why he has taken responsibility for the woman, but he guesses his actions have something to do with trying to erase the humiliation laid down at the feet of the town by Joll, in the name of the empire.

The magistrate follows this path of confused and obscured motivation, a path of chosen blindness on his part, unable or unwilling to recognize his complicity in the mutilation of this barbarian woman.

While the woman stays with him, the magistrate is again isolated from his town. He stops doing social rounds. He retreats into his confusion as if there is a way for him to be kept safe within in.

Before long, the magistrate leaves the town. He leaves his isolation. He steps outside of his cozy self-defined space in order to return the barbarian woman to her people.

He succeeds. However, when he returns to the town he finds it occupied by the imperial army. War is at hand. The magistrate is accused of spying and colluding with the enemy.

What else could be have been doing in the desert?

The magistrate is jailed, again isolated.

This is the second temptation. The magistrate has been put in jail for being reasonable. The empire that claims him and claims his town has deemed his reason treason.

Now the magistrate has an opportunity to disown all the actions of his empire. He is tempted to complete his isolation. He attempts to do it, to remove himself from all moral obligation, all responsibility. He tries to set himself above the rest.

He fails.

In his first temptation, the magistrate was tantalized with the prospect of blindness. He chose not to see the actions and the cruelty of the empire.

In his second temptation, the magistrate moves in the opposite direction, enumerating the injustices and the stupidities of the government. He berates the citizens of the town as well, condemning them as people who have chosen the same species of blindness he had been tempted with earlier.

Like Tantalus, the magistrate is locked in a chamber and set with two choices, two impossible satisfactions. Like Tantalus, the magistrate spends his days in between the extremes. He lives in the middle.

When he is ultimately released and the army vacates the town, the magistrate resumes his old position. His beliefs, though shaken, are unchanged.

He desires peace. He is baffled at the dynamics of his inner life.

Given up the temptations he experienced in his various modes of isolation, the magistrate returns to a life free of illusions.

"In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished."

Reference:

Waiting For the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee, Penguin Books, 1980