Truth?

For me, Waiting for the Barbarians touched on a lot of the themes we have been discussing all semester. Like Nikki and Sarah have pointed out, some of the most obvious similarities are between this and 100 Years of Solitude. I definitely see these, too, and I like how we can see how these topics are important in many different contexts, as well as how they are important enough to merit Nobel attention.
The first thing that hit me in the novel was the Magistrate's belief in the truth. He talked to the first prisoners, advising them that if they just told the truth, they would be fine. Joll had no desire to hurt them if they were just traveling to the doctor. He keeps saying that while he may not know if what is the truth, he also does not have reason to disbelieve the prisoners. When Joll says that he has a process to get the truth, and that he can tell by the tone, the Magistrate really seems to believe him, and it isn't until the grandfather is killed that the Magistrate starts to question what Joll is doing.
This question of truth is strung throughout the novel and ties together themes of language and history. Like 100 Years of Solitude, Coetzee approaches the question of what history truly is. After torturing the Magistrate, he tells him that he needs to leave because they can't support him anymore. He is not a prisoner because "they do not have a record of him," so how could he have been their prisoner?. I think through this brief interaction, Coetzee is pointing to the flaws in history and our perception of the past. This made me think of how many undocumented, or just under-documented, atrocities and murders there have been, and how we can never really accurately gauge the influence of different groups in the past. Like in 100 Years where one Buendia stays alive just so he can preserve a memory of the massacre, Coetzee uses the Magistrate's life and imprisonment to point to how important and brutal details can be intentionally lost and concealed for posterity.
One of my favorite parts to look at in this novel, along with the others we have read, is the author's commentary on the power of language. In addition to exploring the concept of the truth, Coetzee directly looks at language, although more briefly. When the Magistrate has to explain his bag of the excavated letters to Mandel, he pretends that he knows the language to try and make a point. Coetzee closely ties this interaction to his questions of truth, beginning with Mandel saying, "A reasonable inference is that the wooden slips contain messages passed between yourself and other parties". This has been the government's approach to the truth throughout the novel: an "guilty until proven innocent" kind of approach. The Magistrate goes on to make up stories to go along with the language, using the power of lying to his advantage. The most interesting elaboration, I thought, is when the Magistrate says that one symbol could stand for "war," "vengeance," or "justice," depending on which way the character was turned. From this, I understood that Coetzee may be pointing to the power of language, but most importantly, how open language is to interpretation.
In the end, the themes of truth, history, and language became very intertwined for me, and I found myself questioning the subjectivity of all three of these things, and especially how they can shape one another, as well as the past, present, and future.