Characters of Waiting for the Barbarians

J.M Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is narrated by a man called the Magistrate. He is magistrate of an empire supposedly being attacked by barbarians. We see him as an older man with sympathetic and sound views. He is a reliable narrator, I believe, evident through his disapproval of Colonel Joll. Colonel Joll is the only character in the novel with an actual name and is often depicted wearing sunglasses. Because of the concern over the barbarians attacking the empire and pillaging livestock, Joll is called upon to “investigate.” “Finding the truth” is his main concern with these investigations, but from the eyes of the Magistrate, Colonel Joll is way off the mark. He interrogates all the wrong people and beats them until they tell him what he wants to hear, which is that the barbarians are preparing an attack on the Empire. This is, in other words, the “truth.” Colonel Joll is a corrupt leader and the Magistrate is seemingly the only one aware. Everyone else is won over by the propaganda about the barbarians coming to attack and the urgent need for information in order to prevent a war. The Magistrate is the main character and Colonel Joll is his antagonist in the first section.


We see everything through the Magistrate’s eyes and tend to sympathize with him. Waiting for the Barbarians is like his diary entry. He does not trust Joll and finds him very useless against the cause. It is hard to tell whether the Magistrate thinks that there are barbarians waiting to attack or not. However, he shows suspicions with reflections like, “in private I observed that once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians.” The Magistrate is smart, observant, and also sympathetic of the unfairly beaten prisoners. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders and that is why we trust him as a narrator.

Conrad: Symbolist or Impressionist

Ian Watt Article, "Impressionism and Symbolism in Heart of Darkness"

• Discusses whether Conrad is a Symbolist or an Impressionist with various definitions of each
• Impressionism: can be identified with the Impressionist movement in painting, characterized by artwork that had an obscured subject.
• It is the depiction of a subject that is blurred by the atmosphere or environment it is in, seen in Monet's work a lot.
• Heart of Darkness can be considered an Impressionist piece of literature because the Marlow's tale is kind of enveloped, making its overall meaning a little hazy.
• The word hazy or misty is used many times in the opening pages describing the Nellie as it moves down the Thames, which can be applied to the meaning of Marlow's / Conrad's story as a whole.
• The primary narrator "warns us that Marlow's tale will be not centered on, but surrounded by, its meaning.." and the meaning will be difficult to figure out.
• Virginia Woolf quote: "Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end."
• Impressionists aimed to portray what is actually seen rather than an idealized or imagined view of things.
• Apparently though, Conrad was did not consider himself an Impressionist because he was more into realism stuff. Somewhat anti-impressionist.
• However, Heart of Darkness seems very Impressionist because it "it accepts...the bounded and ambiguous nature of individual understanding."
• Another Impressionist characteristic is that Conrad presents something and then holds off on explaining it until later, known as delayed decoding.
• This technique gives a more realistic feel to the narrative = more Impressionist
• Symbolism: objective is to discover coherent meanings and values for which was inwardly yearned, but not found in reality.
• The same argument is made that Heart of Darkness has very Symbolist characteristics, but Conrad himself did not consider himself a symbolist at all.
• Some of his quotes on the subject: He says he wrote the story "straight from the heart," in an attempt "to give a true impression." But he also says, "that [he] wanted to connect the small world of the ship with that larger world carrying perplexities, fears, affections, rebellions, in a loneliness greater than that of the ship at sea." = symbolist attitude!
• There are symbolist aspects of the novel, for example Watt discusses the title.
• The title is compelling in that it make us think about deeper meanings of it beyond the center of Africa.

"How can something inorganic like darkness have an organic centre of life and feeling? How can a shapeless absence of light compact itself into a shaped and pulsing presence? And what are we to make of a 'good' entity like a heart becoming, of all things, a controlling part of a 'bad' one like darkness?"

Marlow's Fresh-Water Sailing Story

Marlow is an explorer. "He is the only man of us who still 'followed the sea," says the unknown narrator who seems to be a crew member on the Nellie. The sea is greatly revered by the sailors who share the "bond of the sea" as well as the bond of the Nellie. It is a lazy day on the Thames River as the Nellie lazily lulls closer and closer to the ocean when Marlow begins his tales of his time as a "fresh-water sailor" on a long, snake-like river in Africa. As a child, Marlow constantly studied maps. He "had a hankering" after Africa as a young boy, and as he grew old, this fascinating, mysterious place became a "place of darkness." When he scores a job on a French steam boat that moves along the coast of Africa, what he sees shocks him. He becomes "acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly." He witnesses a cliff being repeatedly blasted for no apparent reason. Marlow's interpretations of what he sees are never stated, but rather implied. When he sees the native people being enslaved and crawling off to die, turning into "black shadows of disease and starvation," he clearly thinks the methods of buisness in this part of Africa to be more destructive than productive. There seems to be a conspiracy working with the buisness Marlow is involved in but he cannot figure it out. It has something to do with Mr. Kurtz, who we learn about through the dressed-to-impress Chief Accountant. The flabby, weak-eyed devil is present in all aspects of this situation in which Marlow finds himself.
What do you think of this conspiracy? and Mr. Kurtz?