The Role Of Civilism In Waiting For The Barbarians

J.M Coetzee’s novel Waiting For the Barbarians depicts a polarized world where two conflicting societies face each other for the supremacy over the territory. The two sides are portrayed as the oppressor, the so-called Empire, which represents the Civilization and the triumph of order and rules over the primitive ways of the locals, the Barbarian people. However, as the novel progresses, the reader becomes more and more aware of the reality of the Empire, and how it dismisses the natives as “barbarous,” and how in fact it is the Empire itself that becomes increasingly barbarous with no regard for human dignity. The quality deemed most abhorred in the Barbarians—savagery—is widely displayed by the actions and attitudes of the Empire’s men.

Colonel Joll (along with all the characters in the novel) is intentionally depicted as faceless, not only to highlight the Magistrate's obliviousness, but also the author’s disinterest in allowing Joll to function as anything more than literary symbol for the institution, the Empire.
Colonel Joll’s ruthless practices of investigation and torture can be interpreted as an attempt to get the natives into fully assuming the identity of “barbarian” and “enemy” in the eyes of everyone so that the Empire can affirm its existence. While Joll claims to be concerned with discovering “the truth,” through his own personal method “First I get lies, you see –this is what happens- first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, the more pressure, then the truth.” (6) it is evident that the prisoners’ guilt is an already certain conclusion for

The natives’ side is the one that loses the most in this conflict: their land, their freedom and, ultimately, their identity. The so-called “civilized” Empire forces also destroy and burn down the forest, showing how they are conducting a war against the land itself, highlighting their role of savage invaders. The Magistrate grows more and more aware of the destructive impact that the imperial invasion has had on the local culture: “It always pained me in the old days to see these people fall victim to the guile of shopkeepers, exchanging their goods for trinkets, lying drunk in the gutter, and confirming thereby the settlers’ litany of prejudice: that barbarians are lazy, immoral, filthy, stupid. Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of a dependent people, I was opposed to civilization.”