Waiting for the Barbarian

Introduction
About the Author
John Maxwell Coetzee south African writer who is a novelist,essayist,translator and recipient of the nobel prize in literature 2003. He focuses on power. The second work is waiting for Barbarians. The novel was published 1980. He was born in cape Town South Africa.

About the novel
The title of the novel is borrowed from c.p.cavafy's poem with the same title 'waiting for the Barbarian' This text gives the most prominent voice to the post colonial literature.In the novel we can find unnamed empire .
The novel raises the question of conflict between civilization and Barbarians.So there is question that who is civilized  the empire or who are barbarians?
We can seen power position in the novel.

About characters
The Magistrate
There is unnamed Magistrate in the novel.He has also physical relation with blind girl.He was also part of the empire. But empire also tortured him.

Colonel Joll
He was the Antagonist of the novel.He was very cruel person of the empire. He ware sunglasses in novel. He plays the role of classical villain.He torture the native people. They tries to know who are the barbarian.

The nomad girl.
The nomad girl is one of joll's  torture victims who gets left behind after her father is killed in joll's torture chamber.Her legs were broken and her eyes were burned with molten rods. Her body is covered in scars.

Summary
-The novel's protagonist the Magistrate Joll and his third Bureau believe that the barbarians are planning a coordinated attack on the frontier regions.
-Joll sets out on an expedition in search of barbarians. He comes back with a group of Fisher people and nomads joll's prisoners are tortured. Joll tortured all native uncivilized people and tries to know that who was barbarians but native people didn't know the truth so Empire and specially Joll tortured the people in different way. Empire left this people one was blind women Magistrate takes her in to his room. He helping her by washing her feet,he washes her entire body,oil her . He has also some sexual relation with that girl.
-She finally tells him how the tortures burred out her eyes and use a two pronged fork on her body and killed her father. The Magistrate decides to take her back to her people. Through the journey he fall in love the girl. She says doesn't want to go back to the place.
- Empire beat the Magistrate in front of the crowd.
-The Magistrate remains with a few townspeople and only three soldiers. They hunker down and wait for winter. They wait for the barbarians to attack. The first snow begins to fall.
- So now tortured people by empire they are unable to live peacefull life because their scratchs remain on their body so they can't live normal life.

Central theme
Violence
Coetzee represent both type of violence physical as well as mental. Waiting for the barbarians marks a discernable Chang in Coetzee's treatment of violence in the sense that unlike in dusk lands.

Power
We can see the themes like power in this novel. Empire ruled on the uncivilized people and killed and tortured that people.

Torture
Torture was used on the barbarians and also on the Magistrate . Colonel Joll tortured the people. So he was Antagonist of the novel. Blind women,magistrate and other native people tortured by Joll.

Comparison with other text.
Waiting for the barbarians with waiting for the Godot
In this novel waiting for the barbarians the empire tries to start fears in native people that barbarians are come and they attached on this native people. And this people are always waiting for barbarians but they never come because they don't know Who are the real barbarians. In the waiting for the Godot Vladimir and Estrogen always waiting for the Godot but Godot was never come. So main theme Existentialism is seen in both text.