1

Mekni Boutheyna

Daniel Defoe was one of the most prolific authors in the world of literature. His creation of
the first English novel Robinson Crusoe- granted him literary immortality. Robinson Crusoe
depicts the utopian environment which illustrates the life of the protagonist Robinson Crusoe
in a desolate island, but it does not stop in this level, it goes farther to shed light on the human
interaction with the other, namely with the character of Friday. The story of Robinson Crusoe
pervaded the cultural sphere, and became transmitted through several generations as a modern
myth. As a canonical work of literature, this fact did not set it against criticism and revision.
Defoe has received multiple reactions. One of those reactions was embodied in J M.Coetzees
fourth novel Foe, which is a rewriting of Defoes Robinson Crusoe, and a redefinition of its
plot and themes. It paves the way for a new vision of the characters, the setting, and the
human interaction as a primordial issue.
Based on the addition of the two central characters in the novel, a female narrator Susan
Barton, and a male author Mr. Foe who is planning to fashion Susans castaway tale into a
novel, Coetzee wants to shed light on the story of Friday who was neglected in the prototype
via rewr(h)ghting his story. In this respect and through the process of collecting the puzzle of
Fridays story and history, the narrator Susan Barton needs to find the clues in the midst of
versions of self and other that vary in Foe, and she says: but the stories he told me were so
various, and so hard to reconcile one with another, that I was more and more driven to
conclude age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory (12). In the light of this search,
this essay analyses the relationship between the multiple characters and Friday, which is based
on the interaction between: self vs. other, self among other, and self and other. It focuses, as
well, on the variety and the crucial role of storytelling starting from the prototype-Robinson
Crusoe- ending up with its pastiche Foe.

Starting to trace the human interaction in Foe , one must not forget that this very
interaction in built upon the prototype Robinson Crusoe , which witnesses the first contact
between Crusoe and Friday that is reshaped via the master/slave paradigm, and therefore the
self vs. other dichotomy. From his first contact with Friday in the island and affected by the
racial prejudice of his time, Crusoe adopts a self-centered behavior with his only fellow in the
island. He considers Fridays tribe as a bunch of blinded, ignorant pagans (213). He draws
the cut line that divides him from Friday, which is civilization, something that Friday lacks by
nature because he is depicted as a cannibal in his nature (204). Defoe presents Crusoe as the
one who brings humanity to a savage animal. By providing Friday with his name, which is not
his real name but refers to the day they met, and in return Friday is supposed to call Crusoe
master (204).

J.M Coetzee provided a new vision of the hypo text - Robinson Crusoe- through his
hypertext Foe- . His first attempt is to deconstruct the binary opposition which is present in
the prototype via putting Friday in the periphery. Coetzee built the whole novel upon the story
of Friday, and therefore he becomes the center of the whole novels events. He shed lights on
the relationship between Friday and the other characters and though he, through a rebellious
and purposeful reaction, kills the protagonist of the prototype from the beginning of the novel,
he does not overcome the master vs. slave dichotomy that unites Friday with Cruso. The
superiority of Cruso, even partial and not highlighted, still pervades all the atmosphere of the
island. Coetzee keeps this dichotomy to put his novel in the heart of the post colonial
discourse, which necessitates the presence of such a relation as the nourishing ground of the

2
Mekni Boutheyna

oppressed resistance later on. Cruso is still the ruler of the island and the people in it. He
owns them as his subjects and servants, in this respect Susan Barton argues:With these words
I presented myself to Robinson Cruso in the days when he still ruled over his island, and
became his second subject, the first being his manservant Friday (11) Friday, as well, is still
perceived as a cannibal, the same first reflection that Crusoe highlights in the prototype,
dwells in the hypertext when Susan delivers Crusos perception: he would tell stories of
cannibals, of how Friday was a cannibal whom he had saved (12). Through presenting
Friday as a slave who is not able to speak, he even traces something more dangerous in terms
of communication between the latter and Cruso. Cruso does not manipulate Friday only in
terms of physicality, but it becomes a linguistic manipulation. The Master owns the place
and the tools of exercising his manipulation, which is language. Crusoe himself puts emphasis
on this idea saying: My first thought was that Friday was like a dog that heeds but one
master; yet it was not so. Firewood is the word I have taught him (21). The vertical
relationship that gathers Cruso with Friday, makes him the first suspect of cutting the latters
tongue, to enlarge his sphere of domination. To avoid all the suspects Cruso claims
that:Friday lost his tongue before he became mine (37). In this regard, Coetzee presents the
innocence of Cruso coming from his own mouth, but does not deny the self-centeredness and
the racial and colonial discourse that Cruso entertains pointing to Friday as an object mine.
Though Foe depicts Cruso as a completely different persona from the hypo text, where he is
viewed as the paragon of adventures and discovery, he still owns the aura of the Master who
must be obeyed blindly, since he is the savior of the islands inhabitants and the superior man.

The self vs. other paradigm does not stop in the relationship between Friday
and Robinson Cruso only; it shows its traces in the relationship between Friday and
Susan Barton in Foe. In her first encounter with Friday in the island, she shows little
interest in Friday. She attributes to him all the signs of barbarity and inhumanity. she
describes him as a savage slave, a cannibal, and a black: a Negro with a head of
fuzzy wool, naked save for a pair of rough drawers (5) . She could not hide her feelings
of fear and uneasiness towards this creature, which for her, stands as a threat or even
worse, an alarming danger and she says: my fear of him abating in this strange
backwards embrace.(6). Racial prejudices again rule the situation, the same thing with
Robinson Crusoe in the prototype. She evokes traits of Fridays animalistic side. She
subsequently figures him as a dog, a frightened horse (42), and even as a dumb
beast (32). Friday is, again, in the periphery, treated as a threatening object. His
humanity vanishes once he meets a white person. Once Susan is determined to put her
story on paper thanks to the help of Mr. Foe, the author of their story, she thinks about
being a prosperous and famous woman. Conversely she is struck by the muteness of
Friday, and she absorbs that he stands as an obstacle in her way when she says: I am
wasting my life on you, Friday, on you and your foolish story (70). Susans selfishness
pops up once her own project of wealth is endangered by Fridays anomaly. Coetzee
works within the post colonial theory, which shows the reaction of the marginalized
other . The reader can see that Friday, as the rest of characters, has a reaction. He does
not show any interest in Susan, even as a sexual partner. Susan is left alone in his
company, not able to discuss with him, or to share a single word. His muteness is part of
the obstacle, but Fridays unwillingness to share a discussion with her is articulated as
an idea. Susan describes Fridays reaction as a disdain for intercourse with me (98).
He is cold with her. To study Fridays reaction, one must not forget that he went
through a process of brutality: cutting his tongue, neglecting, and subjugating him. He is
the subaltern, as Spivak puts it, who adopts silence as a weapon against those who claim

3
Mekni Boutheyna

their superiority. The notion of otherness, as a primordial notion in the post colonial
studies, plays a pivotal role in the interaction between Friday and Susan Barton.
Through adopting a sterile mode of communication, Friday puts Susan in the periphery
of discourse. He does not allow her to discover the truth of his story, keeping it in an
intact and unreachable zone.

The same idea of self vs. other is articulated in the relationship between Mr. Foe and
Friday in Coetzees novel. Mr. Foe, as the author of Friday and Bartons story, is hampered by
the latters silence. He is unable to articulate the story properly without having, even, hints
about Fridays history and the truth about his mutilated tongue. Susan foregrounds this idea
when she says: the story of Friday, which is properly not a story but a puzzle or hole in
the narrative. (121). As a reaction, Mr. Foe tends to erase the story of Friday. He resorts to
invent another story of adventures and fantasy. This process of erosion is typical in the
colonizers attitude. It holds its roots at the heart of the discourse of superiority. He does not
attempt to reshape Friday or to distort his history, but worse, he wants to obliterate it
completely from the existence. Mr. Foes reaction shows his antagonism and the racial
prejudice, again, within the various characters who encounter Friday. Mr. Foe puts this idea
and says:
The island is not a story in itself, said Foe gently, laying a hand on my knee. We can
bring it to life only by setting it within a larger story. By itself it is no better than a
waterlogged boat drifting day after day in an empty ocean till one day, humbly and without
commotion, it sinks. The island lacks light and shade. It is too much the same throughout. It is
like a loaf of bread. It will keep us alive, certainly, if we are starved of reading; but who will
prefer it when there are tastier confections and pastries to be had? (117)
In this respect, Foe tries to trivialize the story of Friday putting it in the margin, claiming that
there are other stories worth mentioning than a story of a black mute slave like Friday.
In the process of exposing Friday, the center of the novel, to different interactions of
the self among others, Coetzee aims to highlight the antagonist behavior of those who claim
their superiority .
Though, the relationship of the various characters with Friday is manifested through the
dichotomy of self vs. other in Robinson Crusoe and Foe, the interaction has another
dimension that highlights a reversal of the hierarchal concept of the master/slave paradigm.

The multiple characters, at a specific moment, enter in a contact zone with Friday,
where they exercise an interaction based on the relationship of self and other. The two major
characters that highlight this communication with Friday are Crusoe, both in the hypo text and
the hypertext, and Susan Barton in Foe.
The relationship between Crusoe and Friday in the hypo text is not one sided, though it
revolves around the master/slave paradigm, the reader can trace a relationship of coexistence
between the two characters. It comes in several layers. To some extent they are friends.
Crusoe is Fridays savior. He saved him from the brutality of the cannibals in the island. In
return Friday plays a pivotal role through his appearance in the island. He comes at a helpless
moment of despair; one which was able to throw Crusoe at the verge of madness because of

4
Mekni Boutheyna

the latters solitude. Crusoe turns to share some affection on his behalf towards Friday and he
says about this idea:
Besides the pleasure of talking to him, I had a singular satisfaction in the fellow
himself; his simple unfeigned honesty appeared more and more in every day, and I bean really
to love the creature; and on his side, I believe he loved me more than it was possible for him
ever to love anything before. (210)
Crusoe thinks that the companionship of Friday granted him complete happiness. He even
shows signs of admiration to his fellow saying that Friday was the swiftest fellow of his foot
that ever (he) saw (234). Through his presence with Crusoe, Friday is provided with a
luxurious opportunity to learn languages, namely some English and Portuguese, and to be out
of a disastrous state that was about to lead him to perish. Friday helps Crusoe in finding food
and in ameliorating their situation in the island. Therefore the island becomes an agreeable
place to live in, since the two necessary things that hamper the happiness of a human being
exist: bread and companionship. In the pastiche of the prototype, Foe, Coetzee does not
eliminate the element of companionship between Friday and Cruso. Though, the masterservant relationship along with the notion of superiority still prevails, there is a room for
harmony. In Crusos speech there is an emphasis on the we, which stands as a testimony of
his dependence on Friday when he says: We sleep, we eat, we live. We have no need of
tools (32). Even though there is a lack of communication because of Fridays mutilated
tongue, Cruso enjoys The voice of man, which Friday radiates in the place even when he
hum(s) in a low voice (22). It satisfies Cruso to hear him. It stands as a substitute of his
loneliness though it is ephemeral. It makes him remember that he is not alone, and that there
is somebody with whom he can share something spiritual. It is the power of coexisting.
Coetzee goes on with this idea through another character in Foe, which is Susan Barton.

The only female narrator in Foe, Susan Barton, exchanges with Friday a relationship,
which expresses the interaction of self and others. Her first contact with him is full of
prejudices, but after the death of Cruso, and in the midst of her search for the truth behind
Fridays tongue, her perception of the latter changed radically. As she comes closer to him,
she understands that the notions of barbarity and inhumanity that were engraved in her mind
about Friday are but mere prejudices and a set of hallucinatory illusions. The first thing she is
eager to do is to grant Friday his freedom and she did it after Crusos death. She as well
refuses that anyone calls Friday her servant or slave, since she liberated him, and she
says:Friday was not my slave but Crusos, and is free man now. He cannot even be said to be
a servant, so idle is his life (76). As Crusoe is the savior of Fridays life in the hypo text,
Susan granted him his freedom in the hypertext. As Susan comes closer to Friday, the layers
of prejudices are shattered, and she discovers hidden things about him. She decodes the
artistic, sentimental, and even romantic side of him. Friday finds his refuge in dancing, while
doing so, he enters in a state of trance and Susan becomes fascinated she even says:
perhaps it is best that we dance and spin and transport ourselves. (104). Friday can burnish
through his music. He is an artist by nature. It is his only means of expression, the language
of music (96).It is an inaccessible arena, which Susan herself is unable to delve in. She
articulates a desire for Friday. It is the desire for communication. She craves for a word from
him or even a gaze. The Friday of the periphery becomes the center of concern, a source of
admiration, and the mysterious Muse. She puts emphasis on Fridays privacy which belongs
only to him. It must be kept as a labyrinth which guides the people within it to nowhere. In

5
Mekni Boutheyna

this regard Susan says: Friday too has a life of his own (128). In Foe, Coetzee occupies
Susan Barton with the burden of investigating Fridays story.
She carries this load
throughout the novel, in a hope to unearth the truth in a midst of a variety of stories and
versions. Fridays muteness adds insult to injury in this process, but it is a purposeful
addition, through which Coetzee highlights the confines of the procedure of representing the
other.
In Foe, Susan Barton plays the role of the narrator of the story and the investigator of
Fridays story, and especially of the enigma which revolves around a primordial question
Who cut out his tongue?(23). Since Cruso is the one, who owns Friday, Susan suspects that
he is the one who owns the story. Coetzee wants to make her mission even harder, as a matter
of fact; Susan is struck by Crusos inconsistency. He provides her with nothing but different
versions of scattered stories. Since Cruso kept no journal (16), her process of inquiry is
hampered. Cruso provides her with ambivalent stories about his adventures especially the part
concerning the shipwreck, which is kept as a riddle. She comes at a point where she is not
able to believe him and she says: so in the end I did not know what truth was, what was lies,
and what was mere rambling. (12). Crusos fever as well foregrounds the idea of his
discrepancy. He presents Friday as his little slave-boy who accompanies him since his
childhood, and then turns to change his words claiming that he saved him from the hands of
the cannibals, where there first encounter between him and Friday comes to happen. Cruso
reaches a point where he shatters all of Susans aspirations about finding the truth when he
says: Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering. (17). Even concerning the life of
Cruso himself, Susan is unable to find clues about it. There are only the terraces, which are
going to be the testimony of a story that existed, once upon a time, on the shores of this
desolate island. Coetzee does only veil the story of Friday, but of Cruso himself because; as
Susan puts it: Cruso had no stories to tell of the life he had lived as a trader and planter
before the shipwreck. (34). In this level Susan tries to find the story of Fridays mutilated
tongue, to satisfy her curiosity, but once outside the island and via Foes offerings to write her
story, she aims to find the truth so that she will be able to write a faithful version of it.
However Fridays dumbness stands as an obstacle in her way, and she resolves that she is the
one who must carry the burden of representing Friday authentically.
The issue of representation becomes controversial especially when it touches history.
Bartons desire to write her story is a rewriting of history. It deals with events which happened
in the past. Events that include dead people, like Cruso, and people who are not able to speak
or even to express themselves properly like Friday. Thus, the authenticity of the story
becomes crucial and questioned at the same time. Barton carries the burden of representing
the Others story, and subsequently history. Fridays muteness is extremely symbolic. It stands
as a cultural symptom, one which emerges after the disease of colonization or slavery in this
case. Coetzee presents a recurrent picture. It is the picture of the other who needs to be
represented because he is not apt to do so. It is the same colonial discourse of the superior, the
one who holds the burden of the other, the white mans burden. Coetzee stresses this idea
and shows the egocentric dogma behind it. He presents the story of Friday as an allegory of
the history of the suppressed people, those who suffered from long periods of subjugation and
marginalization, and those who live in limbo. Coetzee includes the novel itself, Foe, within a
metanarrative , Robinson Crusoe. The presence of Foe serves as a commentary on Robinson
Crusoe, using a post colonial discourse, which holds several detective questions. Foe stands ,
in this respect, as a detective story, and Susan Barton is the investigator, that is way Coetzee
tends to add a female voice ,which offers a fresh twist, far from the male-centered hegemony.
Susans investigation goes through two phases. She starts the process of investigation within
the boundaries of the island. Her investigation is out of her personal curiosity, and it is clear

6
Mekni Boutheyna

when she says: But now I began to look on him I could not help myself-with the horror we
reserve for the mutilated. (24). Stunned with the horror of Fridays defect, she resolves to
forget about his story saying that she regretted that Cruso had told (her) the story (24).
Susans attitude takes another path when she decides to put her story as a castaway, and her
story in the island with Friday and Cruso in a book, which will be distributed all over the city,
and will grant her prosperity and wealth. The process of investigation about Fridays history
becomes more enthusiastic for her. It has a materialistic dimension now. Her narrow thinking
about writing her story is reflected through her description of it as mere confessions, and
the author who will put them in a well organized story is supposed to be a very secret man,
who is Mr. Foe. However, Coetzee does not present the process of writing the islands story
for granted; he uses the foreshadowing technique to emphasis that the process if rewr(h)ghting
is not arbitrary. It might include gaps of shadow, which will erase later on the question of the
authenticity of the story of Crusos island (which) will go there page by page as (he) write(s)
it, to lie with a heap of other papers (50). The word lie in this respect is used on purpose, to
foreshadow the process of the historical distortion that the author wants to exercise. Coetzee
tends to relate Susans story with Friday. The elusive aspect of the latters history and story of
his mutilated tongue, hampers the growth of Susans story. Coetzee turns Susans search for
Fridays story into a search for identity.
Susans investigation becomes one, which holds questions about the fundamental
status of being. Throughout the process of writing, Fridays history stands as a threat for her
own story. It can even obliterate it. Susan alone cannot be the object of writing. The writing
itself, the being of Susan and the history of Friday are linked together. The absence of one of
those elements, leads to the unraveling of the whole chain. Coetzee in this context is in the
heart of the post colonial discourse, which deconstructs the self-other dialectic. He
emphasizes the idea of continuity. Through the struggle of Susan, he shows that the self
defines itself through the other, without the other the self cannot exist. The existence of Susan
depends on the existence of Friday. Their relationship, according to Coetzee, must be one of
co- signification and simultaneity. It is similar to the relationship between the mother and her
child as Susan puts it: A woman may bear a child she does not want, and rear it without
loving it, yet be ready to defend it with her life (111). She cannot detach herself from him
because she feels that she is incomplete without him in writing and in life that is why, Coetzee
makes the shift in her attitude towards Friday crystal clear. Susan stands as a storyteller, of her
story and of Fridays. She feels that she is not able to represent the other in a convincing way.
She feels that each one should stand for his or her own story till the end, recite it as he or she
wishes, with its details, events, and the emotions that accompany it. Otherwise, it turns to be a
story without a soul. However, at the same time, she cannot trust her own words. Concerning
her representation of Cruso she says: Who but Cruso, who is no more, could truly tell you
Crusos story (51). She, even, starts to doubt the trustworthiness of the process of writing
itself, and says: I may have seemed to mock the art of writing (52). Since she lacks the
necessary information and materials to write her story because Cruso provides her with
nothing but unreliable stories, scattered here and there in his memory. She resolves to write
what she saw, and nothing more to build a bridge of words (60) coming from the island the
storing-place of memories (59). Coetzee does not want to offer a mere writing of the story
in the island, and especially the story of Friday, he highlights the fact that a white man is
writing it. He is the Foe of the story, its enemy, the one who tries his best to reshape it
according to his own desire. It is the recurrent image of the colonizer who wants to exercise
his power over the other, his longing to remold not only his present, but his past as well.
Coetzee makes Susan aware of this process, and purposefully he makes her react against it
saying to Foe: More is at stake in the history you write, I will admit, for it must not only tell

7
Mekni Boutheyna

the truth about us but please its readers too.(63). Susan wants to write her story by her own.
She wants to be its owner and the one who deliver it as a reliable truth: your pen, your ink, I
know, but somehow the pen becomes mine while I write with it (66). She wants to write a
story without strange circumstances, something that Foe is craving for, she wants to lay
bare the truth behind Fridays mystery. Coetzee creates her character to make the world aware
of the atrocity that Friday went through. She says:
But what we can accept in life we cannot accept in history. To tell my story and be
silent on Fridays tongue is no better than offering a book for sale with pages in it quietly left
empty. Yet the only tongue that can tell Fridays secret is the tongue he has lost (67).
Susan wants to uncover the truth and her first refuge is Friday, the only one who can provide
her with a true version of his story.
The enigma around Fridays story and history puts Susan Barton in a labyrinth, which
makes her not able to find the truth in the midst of many stories. She starts her quest via
looking who cut Fridays tongue. Her thoughts run back to Cruso, whom she described in
the beginning as the lenient master. However he is the first one to be accused, despite the
fact that he claims that he is innocent. Susan craves for a mime from Friday and says: Master
Cruso cut out your tongue?(68). Then, she proposes another criminal, the Moors, or the
slavers. Finally, her mind imagines a tribe with no tongues, to whom Friday might belong.
She invents stories, tries to believe them, but she ends up in a desperate state of hollowness
looking for a faithful representation of the man who cut out (his) tongue (70). Coetzee does
not offer a final version of Fridays story and he even claims that: some people are born
storytellers; I, it would seem am not. (81). He leaves the story as a riddle; its keys belong
only to Friday. He deconstructs the very notion of representation. He does not write Foe to
provide the story of the oppressed other. He nourishes the ground of questioning the
authenticity of representation, within a post colonial discourse. In her essay, Margery Fee, a
literature professor in British Colombia, writes about the legitimacy of representing the
other authentically, under reminiscent question Who Can Write as Other? .She argues that
representation through rewriting the history of the oppressed is one of the effects of a power
relationship, which is inscribed within cultural and linguistic forms that generated a historical
amnesia, and it is a purposeful process of cultural distortion. Those effects generate in Foe
through Mr. Foes attempts to cover Fridays story, or to put it in the background. Susan
stresses this idea of the distortion of the story, where Foe wants, even, to eroticize it at the
heart when she says: No doubt he would have preferred Cruso to be younger too, and his
sentiments towards me more passionate.(83). She concludes that Foe cannot carry the
mission of representing the story of the island loyally, and she says: Mr. Foe has run away
from his debts.(87). She gains, by the closure of the novel, awareness of the issue of
representation and writing. She becomes conscious of the deformation that those writers
exercise via their stories. They implement their cultural domination through their writings,
whether for materialistic reasons, or ideological ones. In this regard Susan concludes that
everything: comes to you in the form of stories, and the stories have but a single source.
(91). This single source according to Susan is the oppressed himself because their story is a
story of injustice and brutality. It is a story of misrepresentation, and it is a slow story, a slow
history. (114).Susans consciousness of her inability to collect the puzzle of Fridays history
is partial. She thinks that the muteness of Friday, physical, is the cause of his incapacity to tell
her his story. Though, she tries to use other methods, like painting, to make him express
himself , she cannot understand that Fridays silence is voluntary , just like her silence about
her life in Bahia: the silence of Friday is a helpless silenceWhereas the silence I keep
regarding Bahia and other matters is chosen and purposeful: it is my own silence.(122). She

8
Mekni Boutheyna

perceives herself as the father of (her) story. (123). She refuses to be perceived along with
Friday as puppets in a story (135). However, Friday owns his story and owns Susans story.
His ambiguity hampers her.
Fridays story and history belongs only to him. He is the one who manipulates the
truth of his mutilated tongue. Coetzee presents his story as a puzzle from the first pages.
Fridays atrocity appears only in Foe. In the prototype he is able to speak and learn some
words from Crusoe. This fact, contributes in his subjugation and it becomes doubled: physical
and linguistic. He obeys Crusoe and articulates his submission through language, a weapon
that Crusoe uses it against him. Conversely, in Foe Coetzee provides a different image of
Friday, a mute slave, but he enslaves those who want to misrepresent him. His inability of
speech puts him in the center of concern. It is a journey in search for an enigmatic persona, a
hazy history, and a strange story. Friday uses his silence as a weapon against those who want
to speak on his behalf: Susan and Foe. He is willing to remain unvoiced. He wants to keep his
history intact, away from the hands of the colonizer who wants to colonize his past before his
present, the colonizer who is willing to colonize the mind and the memories of the colonized.
Coetzee provides Friday with an effective weapon, which his silence. The defense mechanism
of Friday is clear in the novel when he refuses to show his painting to Susan, reacting in a
defensive way, as if he is hiding one of his Childs from a beast because he is neither cannibal
nor laundryman, these are mere names, they do not touch his essence, he is a substantial body,
he is himself, Friday is Friday (122). It is the contrary of what Susan thinks about him, as a
person who can be owned and reshaped. Friday owns himself because he owns his secret. He
makes the other characters chained with him because they cannot define their existence away
from him, like Susan. Friday does not erase only his history; he erases every attempt to reach
it in a protective way: Whereupon, instead of obeying me, Friday put three fingers into his
mouth and wet them with spittle and rubbed the slate clean. (147). His reaction is extremely
symbolic, and mirrors his refusal of telling his history to anyone. Friday lost his confidence on
those who claim that they represent him. As Coetzee puts it, Friday stands for the Other who
suffers from a traumatic experience, and who wants to keep the slightest think, which might
remind him that he has a history, that he has a story behind his existence in this world. He is
not a mere puppet to be used, and redefined according to the desires of the egocentric white
man. The impossibility of decoding Fridays riddle is the superiority that both Susan and Foe
exercise on Friday. Communication and egalitarianism might be the key, which will open the
horizons of a true interaction between the characters that is why: many stories can be told
of Fridays tongue, but the true story is buried within Friday, who is mute.(118). Coetzee
keeps the closure of the novel opened to different interpretations, and even shadowy just like
Fridays story. He does not provide a final and ready- made conclusion which might satisfy
the reader. He left them with nothing but extended questions and interrogations. He creates a
modernized closure, different from the prototype which ends up with a clear resolution. The
novel can find its closure only when a true reconciliation finds its way between the self and
the other. When the process of representation stops being egocentric and destructive. It is
when history becomes the mirror of truth, and not mere stories scattered here and there.
The relationship between the characters in the prototype -Robinson Crusoe- , as a
starting point, ending up with the hypertext witnesses a variety of exchanges. They are mainly
based on the notion of self and other. The two narratives build their events upon multiple
versions of self- other. However, both of them define this Other mainly as being Friday. The
reader can detect a relationship, which is based on the harsh master-slave dialectic, and
therefore the self vs. other paradigm. There is as well a relationship of self among other, this
other can be a whole community in this context. The last kind of interaction occurs between
self and the other, which is a relationship of, fractional, coexistence and harmony between

9
Mekni Boutheyna

two personae. Those relationships are presented within a different frame work in Foe because
they happen to exist accompanied by different versions of stories about this other. In the light
of this variety the question of representation and its authenticity needs to be scrutinized,
especially when Coetzee presents the novel within a post colonial discourse, one which
studies the power relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, and lays bare the
truth behind the process of rewriting the story, which is nothing but a frame of a bigger
history, the history of the enslaved and subjugated community.