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Mekni Boutheyna

Handed in on 08 January 2014

By Mekni Boutheyna

Comparative Literature (MA1), first semester

Instructor: Mr. Habib Benlteif

boutheynamekni@gmail.com
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Topic 6:

Versions of self and other vary in Foe as Susan Barton says: “But the stories he told me were
so various, and more and more driven to conclude age and isolation had taken their toll on his
memory.”(p12)
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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.Coetzee’s
fourth novel Foe, which is a rewriting of Defoe’s 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
Susan’s 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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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
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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). Christianity is as well a crucial element in civilizing Friday, who shows in
return his subjection and “he lays his head flat upon the ground close to my foot, and sets my
other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of
subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me as
long as he lived” (203). Defoe provides Crusoe with the aura of the savior, since he saved Friday
from the cannibals, to say that the submission of Friday is not axiomatic, but must be innate
because of Crusoe’s intellectual, racial, and religious superiority. Crusoe takes the
responsibility of teaching Friday language and manners in order to be useful. In this respect,
Friday is presented as a tool or an object which Defoe adds in the island to furnish the life of
Crusoe who he himself articulates this very idea saying: “… and made it my business to teach
him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make
him speak and understand me when I spoke.” (207). Defoe goes farther with this idea through
the deification of Crusoe, which pressed Friday in the periphery, and put Crusoe in the center
and he goes: “… I believe if I would have let him, he would have worshipped me and my gun”
(208). Defoe does not concentrate on the interaction between the two characters. He deepened
the gap between them, attributing to Crusoe the property of the land with its inhabitants, and
providing Friday with nothing but a compulsory submission and marginalization. In this
respect, Crusoe was” the king” of the island and he says:”…my island as I now call it” (219).
Even when Friday wants to show that he has some capacities which are worth mentioning, he
is treated with neglect, which Crusoe uses as a defense mechanism to insure his superiority and
he says:”While my jealousy of him lasted… I was uneasy, and therefore I could not suspect
him of deceit.”(220). While Defoe provides the readers of the source text with a relationship
based on a binary opposition of self vs. other, in his Foe , Coetzee aims to revisit this
relationship placing Friday in its center.

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 novel’s events. He shed lights on
the relationship between Friday and the other characters and though he, through a rebellious
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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 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 Cruso’s 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 latter’s 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
island’s 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
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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 Friday’s 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). Susan’s selfishness pops up once her own project of wealth
is endangered by Friday’s 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 Friday’s unwillingness to share a
discussion with her is articulated as an idea. Susan describes Friday’s reaction as “a
disdain for intercourse with me” (98). He is “cold” with her. To study Friday‘s 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 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 Coetzee’s novel. Mr. Foe, as the author of Friday and Barton’s story, is hampered by
the latter’s silence. He is unable to articulate the story properly without having, even, hints
about Friday’s 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
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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 colonizer‘s
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. Foe’s 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 .Once outside the island, Friday is treated as a slave , or even worse as a savage
cannibal, who puts his foot on the civilized world. He is rejected by the community of the city.
In Clock Lane the people show no respect to Friday’s humanity. They adopt a racial discourse,
one which guarantees for them their preferable place in the center, and discards the other, in
this respect Friday, in the margins. Being the subaltern, the one to be mocked at and treated
with disdain and deep sarcasm, Friday is the one who carries all those blind prejudices. He is
supposed to be reminded of his atrocity everywhere he goes: “Cannibal Friday, have you ate
your mam today” (55). Lacking the sophistication and the civilization of the urbanized world,
Friday is perceived as a gypsy according to the ‘civilized’ people. When he tries to coexist with
people, he finds himself rejected by them. In the restaurant they rejected him because he is not
wearing his shoes, an indication of civilization according to them: “Clean or dirty, he wears
shoes in this house” (102), as if a pair of shoes attribute to any human being his or her humanity.
Friday is objectified. His papers define him, as if his very existence, flesh and soul, is in vain.
This idea is highlighted especially when the Indiaman asks for Friday’s papers to get him back
home, according to Susan’s will: “Have you his papers of manumission?” (110). Throughout
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the novel, Coetzee highlights the antagonism of self-centered civility, and uncovers the ‘real’
brutality of the so called ‘civilized’ people.

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 Friday’s 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 the latter’s
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 master-
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servant relationship along with the notion of superiority still prevails, there is a room for
harmony. In Cruso’s 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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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 Cruso’s 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 Cruso’s, 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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s privacy which belongs only to him. It must be kept as a labyrinth which
guides the people within it to nowhere. In this regard Susan says: “Friday too has a life of his
own” (128). In Foe, Coetzee occupies Susan Barton with the burden of investigating Friday’s
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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. Friday‘s 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
Friday’s 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 Cruso’s 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). Cruso‘s 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 Susan’s 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 Friday’s mutilated tongue, to satisfy her curiosity, but once outside the island
and via Foe’s 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 Friday’s 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.

Barton’s 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 Other’s
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story, and subsequently history. Friday’s 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 man’s 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. Susan’s 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 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 Friday’s defect, she resolves to forget about his story saying
that she “regretted that Cruso had told (her) the story” (24). Susan’s 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 Friday’s 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 island’s 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 Cruso’s
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 Susan’s story with
Friday. The elusive aspect of the latter’s history and story of his mutilated tongue, hampers the
growth of Susan’s story. Coetzee turns Susan’s search for Friday’s story into a search for
identity.
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Susan’s investigation becomes one, which holds questions about the fundamental status
of being. Throughout the process of writing, Friday’s 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 Friday’s. 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 Cruso’s 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 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).
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She wants to write a story “without strange circumstances”, something that Foe is craving for,
she wants to lay bare the truth behind Friday’s 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 Friday’s tongue is no better than offering a book for sale with pages in it quietly left empty.
Yet the only tongue that can tell Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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. Foe’s
attempts to cover Friday’s 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
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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).Susan’s consciousness of her
inability to collect the puzzle of Friday’s 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 Friday’s
silence is voluntary , just like her silence about her life in Bahia: “… the silence of Friday is a
helpless silence…Whereas the silence I keep regarding Bahia and other matters is chosen and
purposeful: it is my own silence.”(122). She 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 Susan’s story. His ambiguity hampers her.

Friday’s 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. Friday’s
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
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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 Friday’s 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 Friday’s 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 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
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of rewriting the story, which is nothing but a frame of a bigger history, the history of the
enslaved and subjugated community.