QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION

[1] Discuss the character of the Magistrate. Is he a good man a bad man? What are his
ambiguities? Discuss his relationship with the ‘barbarian’ girl and how this is central to the
novel. Does he know their language? Do the new people from the Third Bureau know the
‘barbarian’ language? Discuss.

As Valdez Moses (118) and Rich (382) assert, the Magistrate is the representation of
the civilized behaviour as opposed to the barbarian behaviour. He preserves the authority of
the law above all. Nevertheless, he has his own values and he is aware of the abuses suffered
by the barbarians, and therefore he says “Where civilization entailed the corruption of the
barbarian virtues and the creation of a dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to
civilization; and upon this resolution I based the conduct of my administration” (WFTB 53).

The Magistrate starts losing his faith on the Empire when he witnesses the military
atrocities carried out in order to subjugate “the other”. Mandel teaches the magistrate a tough
lesson: “the law does not delimit the use of power; rather, power ultimately defines the
meaning of the law and circumscribes the realm in which it applies” (Valdez Moses119).

On the other hand, his relationship with the barbarian girl is very important because
the Magistrate starts exploring the other and tries to understand his paradoxical feelings
towards her (attraction/non-attraction). In spite of the sexual tension, the Magistrate is
incapable of making love with her and this becomes an obsession for him. Why doesn’t he feel
attracted by her? Whether the Magistrate likes it or not, she is a barbarian and, therefore, she
is perceived as “the other”, the shadow figure created by the white supremacy. The Magistrate
is unable to have sex with the girl because it is against the imperial ethic and it would lead the
Empire its biggest fear: miscegenation, the contamination of the “pure superior culture” and
the consequent reverse colonisation. This explains why the Magistrate is only able to
consummate his relationship when he returns her to her people. By crossing the borders of the
Empire, he “has also crossed a breakpoint in his acceptance of the imperial ethic” (Rich 383).

His relationship with the barbarian girl is seen as a transgression of the imperial values
and this becomes his fall. He becomes an other and is tortured as such. This is a central event
because he develops the feeling of empathy. Now that he has suffered, he understands the
suffering of others. We get a very clear example of this in the scene where four barbarians are
being tortured in public and the Magistrate tries to stop this cruel spectacle. Afterwards, he
condemns Colonel Joll telling him that “You are the enemy, Colonel!” (WFTB 153).

To sum up, the Magistrate becomes Memmi’s “coloniser who refuses”: “A colonizer
who rejects colonialism does not find a solution for his anguish in revolt. If he does not
eliminate himself as a colonizer, he resigns himself to a position of ambiguity” (Rich, 384).

The language of the barbarians remains unknown for the people of the outpost. The
Magistrate never learns the girl’s language. The members Third Bureau have no intention of
learning this language either. The nomad men remain mysterious and so does their language.
They are called barbarians simply because they cannot understand what they say (the word
barbarian literary means “someone you cannot understand”). They’re making an other of that.
[2] The novella explores the rise and fall of empire. How does it do this? Who are the two
characters in the novel that represent the different faces of empire? Also think about the
lake, the quality of the water. This is also important.

Coetzee sets WFTB in no clear space or time, and so, this is not a historical novel but
an allegory of all empires and its “civilized” values (Rich, 381).

As all empires, the one in the novel rises: an advanced society which manipulation of
nature and desire to dominate the world lead them to believe that they are superior beings
and, as such, their duty is to “civilize” the inferior cultures. This “civilizing mission” would have
no sense without what Michael Foucault calls “the process of othering”: the construction of a
person in the shadow image of yourself (the projection of the super-ego), in this case, the
barbarian people. The Empire creates the inferior other as a means to gain its own power. The
heads of the Empire create a discourse about the barbarian other as a dangerous, depraved,
ignorant being; and by creating this discourse they justify what they do. They make people fear
and hate the nomads. However, this fear is based on superstition and ignorance, not on reality
or direct experience. Coetzee continuously presents us this perception of the barbarians, but it
is done in a way that what we know about them is just a rumour: we never get to see the
barbarians. The barbarians become a myth. This is how the Empire gains power and rises.

According to the aforementioned, what we get at the beginning of WFTB is an Empire

which has already experienced its rise (already has this “other” to blame) and which, as we
discover throughout the novel, is in decline. The salty lake is probably the clue that most
clearly envisions this apocalyptic future. According to the Magistrate, who has several dreams
related to poisoned water, the level of salt is increasing in the lake and he can tell this because
of the dying aspect of the vegetation surrounding it. The water is killing the land which sustains
the town. This is increasing excess of salt is a metaphor for the limitless struggle for power, the
increasing excess of the Will to Power which ultimately eradicates the power.

Regarding the two characters that represent the different faces of Empire, Coetzee
introduces us to the Magistrate as a representative of the “old school” of imperial officials who
blindly support the preservation of the “civilized” values (Rich 382). On the other hand, Colonel
Joll represents the “new men of the Empire” who subdue the nomads by military force and
torture (382).

Even though the Magistrate insists on differentiating himself from Colonel Joll, he
finally realises that they are the two sides of the same coin or, in the words of the Magistrate:
“Two sides of imperial rule, no more, no less.” (WFTB 180). Both together write the barbarian
woman’s story, who is “marked for life” by the Empire (Valdez Moses 122).

The Magistrate even sees himself as Colonel Joll’s double, as it can be presumed from
this extract:

“What do I have to do to move you?”: these are the words I hear in my head in the
subterranean murmur that has begun to take the place of conversation. “Does no
one move you?”; And with a shift of horror I behold the answer that has been
waiting all the time offer itself to me in the image of a face masked by two glassy
insect eyes from which there comes no reciprocal gaze but only my doubled image
cast back at me. (WFTB 60)
[3] The Magistrate is also interested in archaeology. What do his findings tell us about the
place where the outpost is?

These wooden slips which the Magistrate finds in the ruined barbarian city tell us that
there used to be another civilization which fell in disgrace. This objects are the non-living proof
and confirmation of the apocalyptic future of the Empire. He knows that the Empire he serves
is not a remarkable one among the many others which have existed and will exist; it is just a
mere phase in the eternal timeline of the history of humankind in which all empires rise and
fall. This could be somehow related to the Nietzschean theory of the eternal return, the idea
that the everything that has happened in the universe will happen again. The existence will
always continue to recur in a self-resembling way an endless number of times.

It is important to point out a remark made by Valdez Moses: According to Hegel

(quoted by Valdez Moses 120), writing is an essential part of History because without writing
there would be now State, no promulgation of the Laws, no civilization and, obviously, no
History: “Those who make history are the only ones in a position to write it.” Valdez Moses
discusses that WFTB “suggest that the fundamental distinction between civilization and
barbarism is that between the lettered and the unlettered.” (116-117). The Magistrate
suggests that the barbarians would “wipe their backsides on the town archives” (WFTB 190).
He is implying that the barbarians are all illiterate and ignorant. Nonetheless, the wooden slips
tell us that this is not true because the barbarians who lived in the ruined imperial city could
write and the wooden slips might contain the record of their History.

The fact that the Magistrate plans to write down the history of the Empire is telling us
that, now that the Empire is in decline, his “imperial self”, as Rich calls it, wants to assure the
future historical legitimacy of the Empire in generations to come, not anymore the past
historical legitimacy, which the Empire does at its peak (384-385).

[4] What is purpose of torture in the novel?

Colonel Joll’s torturing practices are introduced in the novel to point the hypocrite
attitude of the Empire, which claims to be morally superior and civilized but, on the contrary,
uses torture as a method to get the truth out (Valdez Moses 119).

The whole concept of humanity comes into question. The Magistrate even asks
Mandel how he can eat after having tortured a person. The truth behind this perception is that
the imperial culture is actually the barbarous one. In some scenes, like the one in which four
barbarians are tortured in public, people even seem to enjoy their suffering and want to take
part in the spectacle. If the Empire is supposedly bringing this superior culture and its way of
maintaining power is torturing people, the members of the Third Bureau should ask
themselves the question: who is the barbarian?

As Valdez Moses explains, the ambiguous figure of the Magistrate always feels the
need of preserving the absolute separation between civilized and barbarous. However, he
reverses the habitual roles that the nomads and the people from the Empire are normally
given. The Empire has failed to preserve justice, they have become the barbarous people, but
the universal differentiation between civilization and barbarism is maintained (116).
[5] Discuss Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ in conjunction with question [2].

One of the philosophical keys of WFTB is that it can be read as an allegory Nietzsche’s Will
to Power. According to Nietzsche, the Will to Power is over our supposedly first natural
instinct: the instinct to survival. The Will to Power is neither something good nor bad, it is part
of human nature. The problem in WFTB is that there is an excess of the Will to Power: the only
thing the Empire, represented by the Third Bureau, is interested in is maintaining its own
power and expanding its territories. This is what we call “the profusion”, the eagerness of
being endlessly abundant. This excess of the Will to Power is what is going to cause the
downfall of the Empire.

The Magistrate is trapped in this cycle in which empires rise and fall. However, at the end
of the book, there is a scene in which he leaves the town, which becomes a representation of
Empire, and goes to the countryside, which becomes the representation of Nature:

Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the
smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of
rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in
history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind
of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era.

It is in here when we realise that “the (only) escape from History, from Empire, entails
a return to Nature” (124). Coetzee is telling us that we humans have stepped out of the natural
cycle and we have created the “time of the Empire”. At the very end of the book, the
Magistrate imagines himself flying away from History and leaving the so-called “time of the
Empire”: "I wanted to live outside history. I wanted to live outside the history that Empire
imposes on its subjects, even its lost subjects. I have never wished it for the barbarians that
they should have the history of the Empire laid upon them" (206).

[6] Discuss the idea of the scapegoat in the novel.

In WFTB, we never see the barbarians, but they’re always blamed for what happened
because they are outsiders, the constructed other. Consequently, they become the scapegoat.
The archetype of the scapegoat is represented more clearly in the figure of the the barbarian
girl. The super-ego’s (Empire’s) negative elements are projected onto her body becomes a
surface on which the Third Bureau writes and leave the imperial mark (scars) (Valdez Moses
120). She only stops being the scapegoat when the Magistrate experiences a revelation, some
kind of epiphany, and finally gets to see her real face.

Afterwards, even when the girl is not anymore with the Magistrate, her connection
with him is still strong, as it is shown in the scene in which he is tortured with the ladder. In
this part, the Magistrate describes himself as the scapegoat:

A scapegoat is named, a festival is declared, the laws are suspended: who would not
flock to see the entertainment? What is it I object to in these spectacles of abasement
and suffering and death that our new regime puts on but their lack of decorum? What
will my own administration be remembered for besides moving the shambles from the
marketplace to the outskirts of the town twenty years ago in the interests of decency?
(160)
[7] The Magistrate keeps having recurring dreams. How do you think these dreams are
related to the barbarian girl and to his own status within the outpost?

In WFTB, external events are buried inside this anchor character’s psyche and they’re only
revealed through dreams. In many of them, he sees a group of children playing in the snow. In
those dreams, there is a hooded girl who is a metaphorical image of the barbarian girl. Both of
their faces (the girl’s and the barbarian’s) are blank to the Magistrate at the beginning. The
faceless girl is related to the mirror image: having no eyes, she “remains a passive reflection of
his (the Magistrate’s) own imperialist ego” (Rich 383). This is an analogy of the imperialist
longing for power. The girl becomes more visible in each dream and, eventually, he sees the
hooded girl’s face and remembers the barbarian girl’s face.

In these dreams, we can also discover some of the hidden feelings of the Magistrate
towards the barbarian girl. The dream in which he gives her a coin could be understood as a
metaphor of their relationship: he feels guilty for what has happen to her in his outpost, but
also for only offering her a miserable coin.

In another dream, she gives him a loaf of bread and becomes his saviour. She is not “the
other” anymore and, thus, the binary construction barbarian/civilized vanishes in the
Magistrate’s mind.

On the other hand, the dreams related to his own status within the outpost also cause the
Magistrate’s poor rest: his reality as a chief is so tough that his mind is all the time working,
even while he is sleeping. He is always dreaming and, therefore, he is never fully asleep.

There is a dream in which we see a body covered by bees. This image reminds us of the
badly injured boy that appears at the very beginning of WFTB. Here, we are introduced to the
ambiguous character of the Magistrate for the first time, who presents an internal moral
struggle: he preserves the law above all, but the inhuman methods of the Empire have nothing
to do with his personal values and thus he starts rebelling against them.