Waiting for the Barbarians

The first two sections of Waiting for the Barbarians gave me mixed feelings about the narrator. At first, I favored him over the other characters presented in the story, placing him above Colonel Joll, the barbarians, and the other people of the Empire. But as the story goes on, Coetzee gives this main character more depth- as the narrator becomes more human. By this I mean that the reader becomes confused with the true intentions of the narrator, and I feel that he himself is just as clueless. The problem seems to lie in the narrator’s want to be better, but is held back by the fact that he is merely human. He tries to protect innocent individuals from being interrogated by Colonel Joll, becomes irritated by the torture of the barbarians, attempts to find a reason for why he hunts, etc. A major part of his daily activities involves him trying to explain his existence. The excavations of the ruins, his studies of the ancient scripts, his want to preserve the barbarians’ society all point to a desire to give meaning to his life. The second chapter of this novel deals mainly with the narrator questioning human sexual desire. As he grows older, he again begins to question why he has such wants. In the end, this uncertainty and indecisiveness is what taints the image of the narrator in my mind, and also in the minds of other characters in the novel. As seen in the young officer’s reaction when the narrator gets carried away, there is a foreshadowing of what is to result from the narrator’s contemplations. (269)

Diversity of the Human Race/Comparative Worth of Races

Alfred Russel Wallace

- Two parties of argument; one believes that mankind is homogenous and that variations of physical attributes of man have created ‘races’, the other believes in the permanence of these characteristics, the original diversity of man

- The effects of natural selection on man vs. animals: mental weakness takes precedent over physical weakness

- Natural selection affects variations in man’s mental capacities now, instead of physical ones

- Nature still affects man physically in one factor- the color of the skin

- Those civilizations who prospered in harsher climates “hardened” the mind of the inhabitants and thus advanced them further than other civilizations of the world

- Such harsher climates were those of temperate weather and inclement seasons: North-South relationship

- Prediction of the origins of races of man, naturally adapting, gregarious species who migrated to different environments; mental development was accelerated during this time from some unknown cause

Francis Galton

- Sets up comparisons between the Negro and Anglo-Saxon race

- Ranking of the cognitive abilities of different races: A-G are above the mean, a-g are below the mean, and X and x for the extremes

- Example of the white traveler, civilized but an average person, meeting the black tribal chief, raised to be a leader: records never show that the white is inferior to the black- the smartest black compares to an average white

- Greeks are the most valuable race in the history of man, Australians are the lowest

The Conclusion of the Compsons

The novel is essentially brought to a close by Faulkner in Dilsey’s quote, “I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin” (297). The reader is hard pressed to fully interpret what Faulkner was trying to say through Dilsey in this passage. But the story is being brought to a close as the Compson family finally reaches its demise, or so one can predict. Dilsey had been with the family the entire novel, and possibly longer than even this time frame, when the Compson’s were a respectable, aristocratic, Southern family. She sees the ending when, in this final chapter, Quentin runs away and Jason goes after her, leaving mother to die and, consequently, Benjy to be sent to Jackson. Quentin’s running away is crucial because it contradicts Jason’s father when he said to Quentin, “no compson has ever disappointed a lady” (178). Thus all the values and traditions of the respectable Compson family are abandoned and the most recent generation collectively leads the family to its downfall. As Dilsey grows old, she sees that there will be nobody to hold this family together after her, and the Compson legacy will vanish. This is what she saw in her enlightenment during Easter service at church. Faulkner thus brings closure to the novel with the death of the Compsons.

(218)