Waiting For The Barbarians By John Maxwell Coetzee

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

Exploration during the postcolonial era was very popular in footings for people to try and reach out to find ways to set up ground for themselves. In Gilgamesh, the Tempest, and Heart of Darkness, it seems oppression and race played an important factor as to how one coexisted from events that took place to express all that existed during this period. From both good to bad, one feeling strong to weak, or even included or excluded, oppression and race were amongst the many postcolonial lenses that could be viewed from these three pieces of literature. These three stories reveal how racial difference is used to justify oppression during the time of the colonial period.

In “The Interlopers,” Ulrich von Gradwitz and George Znaeym are descendants of wealthy families, who have been in dispute over some land for some years.In Ulrich’s grandfather’s time, his family used the court to seize the land from the neighboring Znaeym family, who the Gradwitzs believed illegally possessed the land. The Znaeyms never accepted the court’s decision, and have continued to hunt in the forest patch. Georg continues to hunt on the strip of land at the edge of Ulrich’s forest because he believes it should still belong to his family.

The non-fiction article, “Children of War” by Arthur Brice is about four children who were forced to flee war and relocate to the U.S. First off, children in warzones are not a big part of what caused the wars, but are still heavily, negatively affected. For many, life was great and jolly for children before times of war, but when war came about it changed their lives, they lived in fear and terror. They lost family, money, and most devastating, their homes. So they were forced to flee, to many countries around the world, but ultimately they came to the United States. At first life was tricky in the U.S, they struggled with language, culture, and homesickness. Although these teens are living in the U.S today, they hope to go back to their

The aim of this book review is to analyze Night, the autobiographical account of Elie Wiesel’s horrifying experiences in the German concentration camps. Wiesel recounted a traumatic time in his life with the goal of never allowing people to forget the tragedy others had to suffer through. A key theme introduced in Night is that these devastating experiences shifted the victim 's view of life. By providing a summary, critique, and the credentials of the author Elie Wiesel, this overview of Night will reveal that the heartbreaking events of the Holocaust transformed the victims outlook, causing them to have a lack of empathy and faith.

In the historical fiction novel The Slopes of War by N.A. Perez, the author illustrates the gruesome battle that befell the little market town of Gettysburg during the Civil War through the various perspectives of all the people whom were immersed and affected. These people included young men fighting, generals arguing about their plans and tactics, and innocent citizens who aided causalities regardless of what color their uniform happened to be. Perspectives from both the Confederate and Union armies are offered in the text to grasp a better understanding of all the thoughts occurring throughout the entire battle, as well as before and after. Throughout the novel, Perez elucidates the emotional and physical aspects of war the people endured, such as traumatizing, graphic images that can serve as bad omens, and loss of loved ones. Also, the book further explains what war truly signified, which was death. The positive results and overall effects of the war as described in the novel, however, somewhat outweighs the negative causes and struggles. In the book Crispin written by Avi, there is a particular quote in the novel on the first page in which reads, “In the midst of life comes death, in the midst of death comes life.” This quote can be related to the novel in numerous ways, and can be applied to life in general, too.

Timothy Findley in his novel The Wars uses a postmodern device where the narration is nonlinear in chronology, making it subjective and more based on memory, ultimately deeming the reader’s perception of the past and the present to be precarious and unreliable. The Wars focuses on a young Canadian WWI officer named Robert Ross. Robert’s story is recounted after his death through many other characters such as Marian Turner, Lady Juliet d’Orsey, and the archivists. Yet, these characters are separated from Robert Ross through one main medium: time. Since these characters are separated from Robert Ross through time and space, the consistency of their perception comes

The Slave Ship was written by Marcus Rediker and it tells several accounts of the African slave trade as well as the world of the middle passage. The author discusses the nature of the slave ship and the African paths to the middle passage. Rediker also mentions the lives of historical figures (Olaudah Equiano, James Field Stanfield, and John Newton) and the roles that they had during the Atlantic slave trade. For the African captives, the sailors, and captains, the slave ship was seen as a wooden, floating, traveling dungeon and a place of terror and survival, which are also the overall main themes of the book.

Early American Literature reflects many conflicting differences in the presentation of slavery during that time period. Through the two chosen texts, the reader is presented with two different perspectives of slavery; Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a look at a slave’s life through the eyes if a slave while Benito Cereno showcases the tale of a slave uprising from the viewpoint of the slave owner.. Benito Cereno’s work shows the stereotypical attitude towards African-American slaves and the immorality of that outlook according to Douglass’s narrative. Cereno portrays the typical white slave owner of his time, while Douglass’ narrative shows the thoughts of the slaves. The two stories together show that white Americans are oblivious to the ramifications and overall effects of slavery. These texts assist a moralistic purpose in trying to open up America’s eyes to the true nature of slavery by revealing it’s inhumanity and depicting the cruelty that was allowed.

The book Middle Passage by Charles Johnson tells a story about the triangular slave trade which took place early in America 's history. This book was written with such close attention to detail that it gave the reader a sense of what life was like on board a slave boat. Johnson 's writing style included many different techniques including the use of varying structure, imagery and language. All of these devices helped create a very successful story about slavery.

Individuals go through many experiences in life, and through their experiences they learn about the world, and how to react to the way it treats them within a society. A society has many expectations that mold people 's attitudes and moods. Throughout life, people are constantly changing themselves to fit into the society and once people fulfill its requirement to meet its expectations they can fit into the world, because the world is built on society’s expectations. The society can make people distant from themselves, when they are busy, and are always being pressured to complete a certain task on time. The society can impact people 's decisions by alternating their ways of treating them. They can be strict, and force people to put their ego aside, while in other situations they want the the people to only think about themselves, and what they want, and how they should value themselves more often, Especially children, who at a young age are trying to find their place in society. In “An army of one” by Jean Twenge, many children are surrounded by coloring books, and other activities that support their self-esteem, hoping to build a concrete understanding of the importance of self. In “Project Classroom Makeover” by Cathy Davidson, students are surrounded by rules, and regulation, that always lead to standardization, and a way for students to forget about themselves, but Davidson wants to change that with technology and restore the students’ self-esteems. The ability for an

Death; destruction; crawling, bloody men without jaws; and a child in the middle of it is just a glimpse of the grotesque short narrative “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce. Chickamauga Creek is an area near Chattanooga, Tennessee and northwestern Georgia, plagued by war, suffering, and bloodshed from the Civil War (Bohannon). Bierce served in the Union Army during the American Civil War (Campbell). Many Americans then, and today, romanticize war with glory, heroism, and patriotism. Bierce defied literary status quo, creating graphic accounts of war, in an age of sentimentalism and melodrama (Morris). Lesser publicized were the perspectives, thoughts, and realities of the soldiers after serving and surviving in the civil

In J.M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate comes to discover the humanity of the barbarian through his interactions with the blind girl, which eventually leads him to learn about the nature of his own humanity. Although the Magistrate is more lenient on the Barbarians than Colonel Joll, he still unknowingly objectifies them, while placing himself above them. It is only when he is imprisoned that he comes to realize the fragility of his own humanity. Ultimately Coetzee uses the magistrate’s journey from empirical leader to broken and fearful prisoner to express that peace and stability between people can only be obtained when all humanity is valued.

The period between the wars was a very difficult time in Germany. The currency was enormously depreciated and there were extreme poverty, depression, and political instability. When the Nazis took power in 1933, horror was their method of achieving their goals. Fear and violence became very common among a society that was still in shock after the First World War. In the book The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, one of the main themes is a conflict with the inner-self. This is seen throughout the book when Michael is young and indecisive between spending time with Hanna or his new friends, when Hanna is on trial and does not know whether to confess her illiteracy or accept being declared guilty, and finally when an older Michael is trying to decide on whether he should save Hanna or respect her dignity.

It is no wonder that how advanced the world may be, there are still a number of human beings, who struggle a lot for their survival; These are the human beings, who are pushed to the margins for the reasons unknown to them, these are the human beings, who are denied a secured place in the world for the mistakes which are not committed by them. These are marginalized people and just like them, their history too is marginalized. Being neglected by the mainstream history, this marginalized history, sometimes has to transform itself and settle in fiction in order to come into light.