Responses

5. Despite his wishes to recount the events that have taken place over the course of a year, the Magistrate says, "Of all the people of this town I am the one least fitted to write a memorial. Better the blacksmith with his cries of rage and woe" (155). What does Coetzee seem to suggest about how we record history? What are the stories we hear and what are the stories we want to hear? How do we comfort ourselves and unnerve ourselves through storytelling?

This part of the novel reminded me a lot of the end of Beloved; we have narrators who don’t seem confident in their story and its significance. In this case, the Magistrate doesn’t feel that he is fit to write the story because of his position in the society as well as his personal investment in the girl. If he is the one to write the story, he knows that he will shape it with his own biases, even if he doesn’t mean to. Coetzee seems to suggest that the wrong people are writing history; even our humbled Magistrate is still the powerful ‘white’ man in a government position. The story being told by an average person could carry more important details because it is more likely that his story would be shared by the population. Further, it seems that the Magistrate should have said that the girl or one of the barbarians needed to write part of the story, but they don’t even get the chance. Coetzee may be showing us how one-sided history really tends to be. We comfort ourselves by belittling our evil actions and pretending they are justified. The point of view through which history is told almost always casts the best possible light on the teller, whether they are the ‘good guys’ or not.

Why do you think the Magistrate is interested in the ruins, and if he is truly fascinated with them why does he have others work on the excavation?

I think the Magistrate is interested in the ruins because he, in part, understands how time will win over any empire. Whoever occupied the ruins before could have been just like his empire, but now they are lost and gone, and who knows what impact they have had. This leads to his interest in their language, as he tries to uncover a history like the one he decides to write.

3. When it comes to the quote “I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them” (58) do you see this as hopeful, naïve, a passing fancy etc.? How does this quote match up with others that appear in the first part of the novel?

I think the quote is an important look into the Magistrate’s mind; we can see that he is struggling with his position in the conflict, and understands, in part, the plight of the barbarians. The quote this brings to mind is: “'only because if you get lost it becomes our task here to find you and bring you back to civilization.' We pause, savoring from our different positions the ironies of the word." The Magistrate understands that barbarity and civilization are relative.

4. What is the purpose of failing to name most characters or places, or even the time period, in this novel?

I think Coetzee does this to keep the themes of the novel universal. Imperialism is easy to relate to for any reader because he or she can identify with either the barbarians or the conquerors, if not both. I think there is a flaw, though, in that he could have made a more powerful statement and possibly had a more meaningful impact if he had given clues or names as to which parties he had on his mind. This seems to be a trend in Nobel Prize winners: they will toe the line, but they don’t seem to ever call anyone out up front.

5.       Discuss the ending of the novel; especially what is the significance between the Magistrate’s dream and the children building the snowman?

I think that the change in the dream from the children building castles to building a snowman is just a comment on hopes for the future. Maybe the future human race won’t be obsessed with territory and castles and empires, but actually care about one another and work to build a better race, not a better domain.