Answers to 5 Questions

1) What is the significance of the police officers glasses? Compare the effect of these lenses and the window of his car near the end to his opinion of the townspeople and barbarians.
The officer's glasses represent the distance between the officer and the town in general, as well as the officer's views and the magistrate's specifically. The officer is bloodthirsty and confrontational, while the town in general seems happy to go about their own ways and be content in their own world. The officer does not see their ways as legitimate and the glasses represent the blockage between the government from the capital and the people, particularly the magistrate. Finally, toward the end, the officer makes eye contact with the magistrate through the glass of the carriage. It was the first time the magistrate can see the officer's clear blue eyes, since the glasses he wore were tinted to shield his eyes from the sun.

2. Discuss the irony on page 114 when the guard describes the barbarians and says "their way is to creep up behind you and stick a knife in your back" since clearly, they have been doing nothing of the sort and the Empire invaded them without warning.
In this quote, the guard is describing exactly what the government does to the magistrate. Even when the magistrate is locked up, they ignore him and torture him more mentally than physically, which is an indirect, cowardly way to deal with another human, like the barbarians that the guard is describing. The guards hardly questioned the magistrate, and no matter how logical his explanation was, the government would not have listened or believed him. The magistrate's own government condemned him.

3.  Why does the magistrate find it necessary to risk everything in order to bring the girl back to "her people"?  What is he proving, and to who is he proving it?
The magistrate is supposedly trying to right a wrong made by the government officials. The magistrate believes the girl will be happy if she is back with her own people and her family. However, he is also trying to prove, to her and himself, that his people are good people, and the government officials that were there are not accurate representations of the town's beliefs and values. On a deeper level, he is trying to convince himself that he is a pure person with only the best intentions for mankind.

4. What is the purpose of failing to name most characters or places, or even the time period, in this novel?
By keeping details that would make this town more identifiable vague, Coetzee is stating that this corrupt, ignorant government can, and probably does, exist anywhere. Almost any reader would be able to find similarities to several governments and events throughout history all over the world.

5. Why does the Magistrate wash the woman's feet?
The magistrate is symbolically washing away his own ignorance and sins while he washes the woman's feet. If he treats her tenderly and with compassion then he thinks he can separate himself from the people of the same government that did horrible things to her and her people. He is trying to convince her and himself that he is different from the guards and torturers.