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)