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    Waiting For The Barbarians

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    The document provides a summary of key events and themes in the first 5 chapters of Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. It touches on 3 main topics: 1) The narrator's questioning of truth, justice, and his role within the empire. He feels different from the other men in power and questions his own importance. 2) The relationship between the narrator and the girl, and how he realizes he could have learned her language. Their interaction leaves him feeling let down. 3) Descriptions of the barbarians and how they seem to have more power in negotiations than the empire acknowledges. It also examines themes of freedom, imprisonment, and the relationship between

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    Waiting For The Barbarians

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    api-25885269
    118 views2 pages
    The document provides a summary of key events and themes in the first 5 chapters of Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. It touches on 3 main topics: 1) The narrator's questioning of truth, justice, and his role within the empire. He feels different from the other men in power and questions his own importance. 2) The relationship between the narrator and the girl, and how he realizes he could have learned her language. Their interaction leaves him feeling let down. 3) Descriptions of the barbarians and how they seem to have more power in negotiations than the empire acknowledges. It also examines themes of freedom, imprisonment, and the relationship between

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    The document provides a summary of key events and themes in the first 5 chapters of Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. It touches on 3 main topics: 1) The narrator's questioning of truth, justice, and his role within the empire. He feels different from the other men in power and questions his own importance. 2) The relationship between the narrator and the girl, and how he realizes he could have learned her language. Their interaction leaves him feeling let down. 3) Descriptions of the barbarians and how they seem to have more power in negotiations than the empire acknowledges. It also examines themes of freedom, imprisonment, and the relationship between

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    118 views2 pages

    Waiting For The Barbarians

    Uploaded by

    api-25885269
    The document provides a summary of key events and themes in the first 5 chapters of Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. It touches on 3 main topics: 1) The narrator's questioning of truth, justice, and his role within the empire. He feels different from the other men in power and questions his own importance. 2) The relationship between the narrator and the girl, and how he realizes he could have learned her language. Their interaction leaves him feeling let down. 3) Descriptions of the barbarians and how they seem to have more power in negotiations than the empire acknowledges. It also examines themes of freedom, imprisonment, and the relationship between

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    Waiting for the Barbarians through Ch.

    Truth

    - hearing truth during torture / pain (5)


    - telling truth to inquisitors (7)
    - “Tell them (the barbarians) your story. Tell them the truth.” (71)

    Justice

    - “the memory of j” (139)


    - “each one of us…knew what was just” (139)

    The narrator

    - always thinking; over-analyzing


    - Girl to n: “You always want to talk.”
    - Different (from other white men in power) in his intentions, self-questioning?
    - confused about his self-importance when confronted with his absence, leaving his post
    - happy to be associated / aligned with Barbarians (forced) (78)
    - bored, angry with his incarceration

    N & Girl: relationship, needs, questions

    - time towards barbarians more valuable than months in town (70)


    - N realizes that he could have used/spent time learning her language / “tongue” (72)
    - anticlimactic; let down

    Barbarians

    - seem to have more control, power in the negotiations (72-3)


    - “men of the past”?

    Freedom & Prisons

    - what is available vs .what is restricted


    - is there safety to a cage?
    - was anyone looking for him when he escaped? does he want pursuit? to be missed?
    - “But you are not a prisoner” (125)

    Records and History

    - proof
    - establishing or granting existence (a record of a life); Holes?
    - the slips of wood for the n’s dig sites

    Empire and Barbarians


    - are the Bs the only possible cause for the vandalism/damage to fields, reservoir?
    o but “no one saw them” (98)
    - civilized, righteous vs. primitive, secretive
    o but the war seems to make the Empire ruthless

    Mandel

    - clear blue eyes; the clarity revealing an emptiness, an absence


    o a “window of his soul”, not a “window to his soul”
    - reacts with first (?) emotion when n asks how M can live after torturing others
    - if he is “fated” to suffer the shame” of having watched men suffer unjustly, does that fate
    occur instantly, later, never? a fate that never happens?

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