Summarized & Analyzed: "Waiting for the Barbarians"

By Student World

The title of the book is said to have been taken from a poem of the same name composed by the Greek poet Constantine. This political allegory describes the imperialism and the violence caused by the colonists.

The book was written during the apartheid era in South Africa. It is also considered as a Heart of Darkness fable. It describes how the Empire is scared of an imagined enemy within. It also tells in great details about racism that was practised by the colonists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Apr 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370402205

Book preview

Summarized & Analyzed: Waiting for the Barbarians

Student World

www.smashwords.com

Copyright

Summarized & Analyzed: Waiting for the Barbarians

Student World

Copyright@2017 Student World

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

Summarized & Analyzed: Waiting for the Barbarians

Copyright

Introduction

About Waiting for the Barbarians

Plot Overview

About Major Characters

The Magistrate

Colonel Joll

The Nomad Girl

Complete Summary

Critical Analysis

Note

Introduction

Student World is a group of college lecturers and professors. We understand how high school and college students feel when they are given to read literature, especially classics. They generally get lost in the long and complex sentences, a parade of characters, and shifting narratives, thus making it difficult for them to make head from tail.

Our guide books are written in very simple and clear language, without exaggerating the facts. We do not include our opinions and never become too subjective while analyzing the works of literature.

We try to make our books as easy as possible for students to read them and learn from them so that when they read the original texts of the classics or other works of literature, they are prepared and they know what the work is about.

In this book we have included introduction to the book, plot overview, about major characters, complete summary, and critical analysis.

Although we know that some students do not want to read the original text because they prepare only to pass their exams or tests, yet we insist that they read the original text of the book so that they can understand the subtle aspects of the narrative which can't be presented in this treatise.

All the best

Student World

About Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee was first published in 1980. This novel by the Nobel laureate Coetzee was the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction.

The book has already been adapted into an opera of the same name. The opera’s first performance took place at Theater Erfurt, Germany, in September 2005.

The title of the book is said to have been taken from a poem of the same name composed by the Greek poet Constantine. This political allegory describes the imperialism and the violence caused by the colonists.

The book was written during the apartheid era in South Africa. It is also considered as a Heart of Darkness fable. It describes how the Empire is scared of an imagined enemy within. It also tells in great details about racism that was practised by the colonists.

The book presents the fictionalized Empire. The historical time period is not specified. The location has also not been specified. However, the location definitely resembles South Africa.

The Empire remains unnamed throughout the story. There are so-called barbarians living at the edge of this Empire. They often come to the border towns to trade.

An unnamed magistrate is the protagonist of the novel. He happens to be the in charge of one of the border towns. He is happy serving the Empire, enjoying peace in his sleepy outpost.

As the story progresses the magistrate sees the brutalities committed by the Empire and learns that these