1. Coetzee draws connections between people and animals throughout W.F.T.B. What sort of binaries does this seem to suggest exist as this relates to behavior and treatment of others? Examples?
2. Coetzee links torture and sex as acts of a highly intimate nature, going as far as to have his narrator suggest that he might have been jealous of Colonel Joll for being able to inflict something permanent upon the 'Barbarian' Girl. What, if any, implications do you see in this concept, with regards to human interest in sexuality and in connecting with other people?
3. Do you see the Magistrate, the narrator, as a martyr figure? Does Coetzee suggest anything fruitless or empty in martyrdom? Examples?
4. If you were to interpret the narrator's dream what do you see it as symbolizing? How do you think this dream connects to the altered manifestation of it that the novel ends with?
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?
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