Coetzee’s, Waiting for the Barbarians chronicles the internal struggle of the magistrate of a small town under the dictation of an unjust and cruel Empire. Through the characters of the magistrate and Colonel Joll, Coetzee establishes the idea that violence is a manifestation of fear. As the magistrate and Joll commit violent acts, Coetzee accurately presents the true nature of the fear that leads to cruelty and injustice. Fear is created when a person fails to understand himself. It is this ignorance that causes Joll to torture an elderly man and a young boy. It is this ignorance that causes the magistrate to hold the barbarian girl captive and force his will upon her.

The repressive regime of the Empire purposefully instills fear in its people to keep them ignorant and therefore subject to their dictation. The people of the village are kept under constant fear of a race of people they have never known to harm them. By encouraging this fear through violent campaigns against these barbarians, the Empire forces the people to rely on them for protection and knowledge rather than themselves.

Coetzee uses the magistrate to illustrate the journey of learning the true nature of oneself, and how this will ultimately lead to a rebellion against violence. In the beginning of the novel, the Magistrate does not feel accountable for the actions of his government in his jurisdiction. He turns a blind eye on the injustice and violence of the state and allows them to infiltrate his town in defense against the barbarian threat. This marks the beginning of his journey to self understanding.

At this time, the magistrate desires merely to bide his time towards retirement in hopes that the remainder of his service is peaceful and uneventful. Here Coetzee demonstrates the passivity and indifference of the people under such repressive regimes. By forcing the people to rely on them for protection and even what to think about others, the Empire has caused the people to lack ambition to improve themselves and the world they live in. Therefore, when the people believe the Empire is treating someone unjustly, instead of questioning and challenging it, the people place more trust in the Empire’s judgment than their own and allow the cruelty to continue. If the people came to know and understand themselves, they would be able to trust their own judgment enough to know when it should overrule the judgment of their government.

When Colonel Joll tortures the boy and the man, the magistrate begins to question the justification of the punishment. This is the first instance the magistrate begins to challenge authority and takes some responsibility for the actions of his government. By defiantly questioning Colonel Joll’s torture of the old man and boy, the Magistrate learns that Joll justifies using torture to obtain information because he believes “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt” (Coetzee 5). In this case, Joll does find himself accountable for the violence he commits, but justifies his continuance as a service to the people. Whereas the Magistrate also finds himself accountable for the violence committed by Colonel Joll, he feels responsible for supporting his victims after their torture. The magistrate even provides the boy with a plan to escape more torture from Joll by telling him to “tell the officer the truth” (Coetzee 7).

However, by this time, it is questionable that the truth is all that Joll seeks from his torture since he has killed an old man and is still torturing a young boy who are both very unlikely candidates to be in a raiding party due to their health and age respectively. If they were not in the raiding party, they would have had no knowledge of the movements of the barbarians. Not only does this element make Joll’s torture suspicious, but eventually he submits the boy’s confession of being part of the raiding party. Joll did not torture them to discover the truth, but to encourage the fears of the locals that they are in constant danger of being attacked by the barbarians.

From this we see that Coetzee provides an explanation for the actions of both the opressor (Joll) and the oppressed (magistrate) and how their relationship is interchangeable. Even after helping the boy get cleaned and cared for after being tortured, the Magistrate still turns a blind eye when Joll tortures him again the next night saying, “for a while I stopped my ears to the noises coming from the hut by the granary where the tools are kept” (Coetzee 9). Here the reader may question the Magistrate’s reasoning for placing all blame on Joll. If the Magistrate allows such injustice to be committed under his service, is he not responsible as well? He wonders how Joll can live amongst clean peoples while his hands are filthy with violence, “Does he wash his hands very carefully, perhaps, or change all his clothes, or has the Bureau created new men who can pass without disquiet between the unclean and the clean?” (Coetzee 12). Yet he never turns this questioning on himself, looking introspectively at his own contributions to the violence committed.

Once the fishing peoples are captured as prisoners by Joll’s forces, the magistrate accuses the Empire of being ignorant. Now, the magistrate is beginning to recognize the connection between ignorance and violence. He openly defies their actions and immediately realizes that, “One should never disparage officers in front of men” (Coetzee 17). The magistrate is still on the fence at this point, he recognizes the mistakes and injustices of the Bureau, and thinks of ways to halt them, but is still afraid to act in complete defiance of their authority. He considers how to handle the problem of the prisoners from the fishing tribe, “If I unlock the gate in the dead of night, I wonder will the fisher folk sneak away? But I do nothing” (Coetzee 20). Here, the magistrate remains passive-aggressive in his contradicting idealism because he has been conditioned his entire life to obey the Empire without questioning its morality or intentions.

What finally leads the magistrate to understand himself is his interactions with the barbarian girl. The magistrate has lived in the town and served the people for many years, yet he is in great isolation. His perpetual isolation makes it difficult for him to feel accountable for what he has allowed the Colonel to do in his jurisdiction. After Joll leaves, the magistrate feels that the violence has left his town stating that he is now “relieved of my burden and happy to be alone in a world I know and understand” (Coetzee 14). This statement shows that the magistrate is not familiar with the presence of violence. This is partly why he does not feel accountable for the violence of the Colonel against the suspected barbarians. He does not understand violence, why it is committed, or how to stop it. Once the magistrate knows the barbarian girl, he begins to know himself. This allows him to have more faith in his judgment and thereby question the violence that not only the Empire commits against the barbarians, but also that which he commits against the barbarian girl.

The interest that the magistrate develops for the blind barbarian girl eventually leads him to a recognition and understanding of violence. She has been mutilated by the officers who captured her. They have destroyed her foot and ruined her eyesight as well as killed her father. Coetzee shows the magistrate’s fascination with the girl, which could be read as a dual fascination with violence, not only in the form of the violence committed against her by the officers, but by the violence that he himself will commit against her. He takes her into his care, but then she has no choice to submit to his manipulation of her body, his touching and caressing. Although he establishes his relationship as one of kindness and care, he does act violently against her by forcing himself upon her, not by sexual intercourse, but through other physical contact.

Here the reader may draw a parallel between Joll and the magistrate. Joll justifies his intense pleasure in torturing by claiming it is a necessary evil to discover the truth that will protect the people. The magistrate justifies his actions with the barbarian girl by classifying it just as he would if he were caring for a helpless and wounded animal. The magistrate takes deep pleasure from washing and caressing the girl, even saying “I lose myself in the rhythm of what I am doing. I lose awareness of the girl herself. There is a space and time which is blank to me; perhaps I am not even present.” (Coetzee 28). By indulging himself in caressing this wounded girl, he becomes only aware of the pain and the scars of violence without being aware of the human herself. In acquiring this knowledge and familiarity with violence, the magistrate is in “rapture, of a kind” (Coetzee 29).

After some time with the girl, the magistrate begins to grow uncomfortable and confused with their relationship. He does not desire her sexually- he goes to other women to fulfill his sexual needs, but he gets such enjoyment from examining and feeling her body that he cannot come to any other conclusion than that he wants her, but something is holding him back. Finally he acknowledges that the girl is still violently oppressed, but now it is by him instead of the Bureau. The magistrate admits, “She is as much a prisoner now as ever before. Though my heart goes out to her, there is nothing I can do” (Coetzee 55). Now the magistrate is making an even bigger jump from innocence to guilt. Now he is actually instigating violence himself, by forcing his will upon the girl, instead of just letting violence go on in his presence. Still, he does not take any responsibility for correcting the wrongs that are being committed.

With time, the magistrate’s guilt overwhelms his fear of rebelling against the Bureau and he decides to take a party to meet the barbarians and return the girl to her tribe. This is in direct opposition to what he is ordered to do by the Bureau. He not only leaves his post as magistrate, but he consorts with the enemy barbarians. When he returns from delivering the girl, he is confronted by Joll. To Joll this constitutes a friendship with the barbarians and he places the magistrate in jail. It is here that though imprisoned, the magistrate finally feels free, “I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I have set myself in opposition, the bond is broken, I am a free man.” (Coetzee 78).

As the officers return with more prisoners, this time chained by wires looped through their cheeks, the magistrate is horrified. He knows that now he must speak out to the people so they will realize the cruelty of the officers. This time he will act upon his conscience’s pleadings because since he is already in prison, he is free. As he breaks out of his cell to see the new group of prisoners he asks, “What have I to lose?” (Coetzee 102). Now the magistrate heroically defies Joll by establishing the humanity of the barbarians and demanding their humane treatment:

“We are the great miracle of creation! But from some blows this miraculous body cannot repair itself! How – !” Words fail me. “Look at these men!” I recommence. “Men!” Those in the crowd who can crane to look at the prisoners, even at the flies that begin to settle on their bleeding welts. (Coetzee 107).

This speech is prompted by the conspiring of the gathering in the town to incite a little girl to contribute to the beating of the barbarian prisoners. This final despicable act inspires the magistrate’s outburst. He realizes that each person is accountable for the violence against the barbarians, whether they are beating them, encouraging others to beat them, or merely standing by and watching the beatings. By repeatedly stating that the barbarians are men, humans, and deserve humane treatment, the magistrate finally shows the reader that he has come to self-realization. That self-realization allows him to realize the true nature of everything and enables him to rebel against the forces of cruelty that repress the barbarians.

Now that he has already consorted with the enemy, he is free to defend them as he should have from the beginning. Since he is already being reprimanded, he cannot be further punished. The magistrate exposes the violence for what it truly is- not a measurement of punishment or a preemptive strike against a known enemy- but a fear that is festered by reinforcement from the Bureau and ultimately the people themselves that keeps the people under the complete control and influence of the Empire. From his self-understanding comes his freedom, and from that comes his ability to confront the injustice of the Empire.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York City, NY: Penguin Books, 1982.