In J.M Coetzee’s short story, “Waiting for the Barbarians” issues of identity and torture dependent upon another barbarian enemy to strengthen the national feeling of the state. Also, it emphasizes the troubled nature of the Magistrate’s reflections on his moral identity as well as the moral identity of his culture and people who lack a sense of humanity. Throughout the story, it can be apprehended how desperately the Magistrate searches for the truth in the past with the hope that it will help define himself and bring forth humanity among the people.
In the beginning of the novel, when the higher representatives arrive and start interrogating and torturing the barbarian prisoners the Magistrate seems to value the humanity of the barbarians quite a bit. He called this an “obscure chapter in the history of the world”(Coetzee). The Magistrate questions his own role in the empire as well as to why the people of the empire conduct themselves in such a manner. Knowing full well that the barbarians are no threat to the empire, the Colonel continues to degrade them because
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It looks as if he is identifying with the repressed due to the fact that he does not know “Whether to read from right to left or from left to right... No idea what they stand for”(Coetzee 2989). The Magistrate’s interpretation of the wooden slips is a brief, but significant rejection of the authority of Joll where he represents his own motives and tries to differentiate himself from the man of the Empire. Among all the officials on the frontier, he was the only one “who had not given his fullest co-operation” (Coetzee 2991). He was the only one who understood what was morally wrong with the people in the empire. Also, if he can begin to repair the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, he can begin to create a new existence for himself outside of his people’s