Waiting for the Barbarians Essay
I this essay I will talk about the characters and analyze the book in my perspective.
Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. It was first published in 1980, chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction.
The novel is about a city magistrate in a village of a nameless empire. The narrator, who we do not learn name of, becomes involved with a "barbarian" woman after visiting soldier captures some tribes people and brings them back to the camp for "interrogation." The woman is blind, and the magistrate begins a strange relationship with her.
The …show more content…
Every time the blind girl comes over to the magistrate, he always baths her, through out the whole story. One of the symbols that we can see is when he washes her feet. Jesus washed his disciples feet, which is a symbol to lay low or to serve. The magistrate is kind of apologizing and tries to wash away the marks of torture, he sees the blind girls as pure and innocent which is might be why he never had sex with her, if he had sex with her it would have been rape and it symbolizes control.
Even though the people of the city knew that the barbarians were not a treat, they still did not say anything. The Barbarians were expected to attack the city, which they never did. The magistrate is the only one who did not stay silent he never supported the act of torture and because of that, he is being punished.
As a conclusion, you cannot wash away the marks you have left even though you try your best. As the book title says “Waiting for the barbarians” who never came, the author is trying to tell us that sometimes we believe in the things that we knew that are not true, but we still go with it and it can cause damage on others.
I want to end my essay by saying that I have read the book only once, but don’t understand it completely, there might me some misunderstanding and it is why I couldn’t write more than eight hundred
I this essay I will talk about the characters and analyze the book in my perspective.
Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. It was first published in 1980, chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction.
The novel is about a city magistrate in a village of a nameless empire. The narrator, who we do not learn name of, becomes involved with a "barbarian" woman after visiting soldier captures some tribes people and brings them back to the camp for "interrogation." The woman is blind, and the magistrate begins a strange relationship with her.
The …show more content…
Every time the blind girl comes over to the magistrate, he always baths her, through out the whole story. One of the symbols that we can see is when he washes her feet. Jesus washed his disciples feet, which is a symbol to lay low or to serve. The magistrate is kind of apologizing and tries to wash away the marks of torture, he sees the blind girls as pure and innocent which is might be why he never had sex with her, if he had sex with her it would have been rape and it symbolizes control.
Even though the people of the city knew that the barbarians were not a treat, they still did not say anything. The Barbarians were expected to attack the city, which they never did. The magistrate is the only one who did not stay silent he never supported the act of torture and because of that, he is being punished.
As a conclusion, you cannot wash away the marks you have left even though you try your best. As the book title says “Waiting for the barbarians” who never came, the author is trying to tell us that sometimes we believe in the things that we knew that are not true, but we still go with it and it can cause damage on others.
I want to end my essay by saying that I have read the book only once, but don’t understand it completely, there might me some misunderstanding and it is why I couldn’t write more than eight hundred