Summary Of Waiting For The Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians follows the Magistrate of a colonial town and the events that occur around him when people hear that the barbarians are about to attack. The protagonist is the Magistrate and the antagonist is Colonel Joll. The colonial town is referred to as the Empire. Outside its borders reside the barbarians or nomads. Soldiers in town take them hostage, cruelly torture them for information and murder them for no reason. They do not even see them as humans. When rumor spreads that the town is on the brink of being raided by the barbarians, a special force called the Third Bureau is unleashed. Colonel Joll is part of that force. He hunts, imprisons and tortures barbarians while seemingly enjoying his and his soldiers’ vile acts.
At the beginning, the Magistrate is somehow in denial about the cruelty of his people, he shuts the …show more content…
The Colonel has brought barbarians and made a huge scene in which he encourages people to torture them. It is too late for the Magistrate to change the reality around him. Once the Colonel decides that the Magistrate is no longer a threat, he frees him from prison. As winter approaches and the barbarians do not, Colonel Joll and his soldiers abandon the town. People carry on with their lives, waiting for the barbarians, but they are nowhere to be seen.
The setting of the story is purposefully obscure. We do not know the time period or who the colonists and the barbarians are. Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegorical novel set in the present. There are no specific details to the story that mirror one particular event in the past. Therefore, this makes it possible for the tale to be applied and connected to multiple terrible events in history. The story works as a commentary and a raw representation of colonialism, human cruelty, torture and conscience. It examines philosophical questions and evokes