What Is The Critical Criticism Of Waiting For The Barbarians

War! Horrid War! The atrocities of World War II that the Germans committed in the confines of their concentration camps are all but forgotten. The American novelist, travel writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn knew all too well about the atrocities that occurred at the infamous Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. She gives an expository recount from the point of view of herself and the surviving prisoners of war. She details the prisoners’ stories and her own visit to the camp from after the Americans had liberated it from the Germans in 1945. Gellhorn does so with attention for detail and uses language techniques such as personification to bring the abhorrent scene to life in the reader’s mind. We also learn about the awful treatment of the prisoners and the abominable experiments the Germans conducted.

Whether past or present, there is no denying the fact that we humans have created an existence in which it is not uncommon to subject other breathing human beings to conditions of separateness and extreme oppression. The societies we create aid in participation of these conditions in a way that some deem acceptable, even if threatening to the moral norm. “Going to Meet The Man,” a melancholy story written by James Baldwin, sheds light on the tragic problem of racism that has afflicted our world and how this racism came to be. By examining the past and present life of a racist sheriff in a southern town, this tragic story epitomizes the terrible truth of reality and exemplifies the tragedy and problem of moral knowledge, alienation from others, and the tragedy of morally conflicting demands.

While all people like to believe they are virtuous and honorable, it is often not the case. In fact, many would rather stand by and watch as unjust treatment occur, thinking it would not affect them. These people, known collectively as bystanders, are present at the event, but choose to not take part in it. They often feel remorse for the sufferer, yet would not lend a hand in fear of becoming one. In “The Hangman”, a narrative poem by Maurice Ogden, and Eve Bunting’s “Terrible Things”,figurative language is used to emphasize the significance of bystanders. These literary devices help develop several cruel yet irrefutable themes.

Under the rule of the Nazis, and in the battle between life and death, the caring, courageous, and thoughtful Elie Wiesel recounts his life events in the memoir Night. As a Jewish boy growing up in Sighet, Transylvania during World War II, Wiesel experiences firsthand the cruelty of mankind. The author depicts the unpleasant living conditions contributing to the starvation of the prisoners in the concentration camps and the violence in the struggle to survive. Throughout Wiesel’s writing, there are a variety of literary techniques to describe the horrors he has experienced. Elie Wiesel utilizes figurative language to describe the men and their actions, and he writes a flash-forward to complement the greater ideas about humanity and savagery

Imagine being cruelly tortured, starved, and worked to death everyday. In his autobiographical novel, Night, Eliezer Wiesel shares his experiences of being a Jew during the rule of Adolf Hitler, an anti-semite. When Hitler proposed the Final Solution, the eradication of all Jews, Eliezer and his family were forcefully taken to a concentration camp called Auschwitz-Birkenau. Although Eliezer survived, he lost his family and identity due to traumatizing horrors of camp. Over the course of the novel, Eliezer’s actions and words have demonstrated that he changed from being religious and caring to faithless and selfish.

Your memoir, Night, drastically changed my view on the world; more specifically, I now sympathize more with individuals who are experiencing a struggle of any kind. This is a result of the brutal details that forced you to create a vivid image of the situation at hand. Before reading Night, I never truly took the time to imagine what it would be like to be in these tragic situations. Therefore, I would like to thank you for bringing this inhumane flaw I possessed to light. The first account of me realizing this flaw, occurred because of the Nazis’ brutality.

Authors often use characters within their novels to show the consequences of challenging cultural boundaries and, in turn, display their own personal concerns. It is not uncommon for characters to reflect an author’s ideology regarding social groups in their contemporary time periods. It is clear that this is certainly the case with the 1975 novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, (also referred to as How Violence Develops and Where it Can Lead), written by the German Author, Heinrich Boll. The Lost Honour is, on the surface, an attack on yellow journalism and the damage it causes to the lives of the people reported on. However, with a more in depth analysis of the novel we are able to

Violence has been interpreted in various way by authors as the centuries have gone by. In Candide, Voltaire paints a picture about violence in the 17th century as war that continues to rage over centuries between empires with the main protagonist Candide, and his fellow members being subjected to all kinds of hardships as they themselves become casualties of war. In the Dew Breaker, Danticat discusses the extent of the everlasting damage, both physical and psychological, that is caused by totalitarian regimes, such as the Duvalier’s in Haiti in the 1970s. The central character in this story, The Dew Breaker represents an individual that is the product of such regimes, with his cruel and sadistic past as a torturer epitomizing violence. On the

Morality is adaptable in extreme situations. The Holocaust is an example of what happens to one’s morality when forced to adapt to animalistic behavior in order to survive. Life in Auschwitz required a purging of one’s human dignity for survival. Prisoners were constantly exposed to perpetual dehumanization, which inevitably led to the dehumanization, and restoration of one’s mental, physical, and social adaptation. Because of this, one’s morality begins to erase. It is in the adaptation of living in a merciless world that the line separating right and wrong begins to blur. Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, both represent how morality and ethics are challenged in the means of survival.

While he waits “at a traffic light,” he “catches his eye [on] a tall girl in a black leather skirt” (Coetzee 194). She is mere stranger on the road, yet he is confident in being able to immediately hook up with her. The way he looks at women, reflects how they are displayed as animals and sexual bodies waiting for someone to catch them and because this occurs frequently, the idea of female bodies being dominated and constructed through male ideology becomes naturalized and accepted as a norm in society. It is evident that though all women do not become prostitutes because they enjoy the idea of it, there is this acceptance of the gender binary, where women choose to transform themselves into this sexualized character that seeks attention and is submissive to the man. Monique Wittig highlights the idea of categories in her text, “One is Not Born a Woman.” She agrees with Coetzee’s representation of the male and female roles and says that “for “woman” does not exist for [them]: it is only an imaginary formation” created by men (Wittig 15). Wittig explains that the category of “women” goes beyond the biological genes and outer appearance. It is something that is created not to make women feel good about themselves or to give them certain types of privileges, but it is a socially constructed idea that subject’s women into a certain type of character that benefits men. She goes on to say that “Once the class “men” disappears, “woman” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters” (Wittig 15). Consequently, the class of “women” is created in response to “men,” where if the category of “men” did not exist, then women would not be so restricted in the things that they are allowed to do and they would not have to live a life trying to satisfy men in order to

“Punishment,” a poem written by Irish author Seamus Heaney, speaks of the discovery of the body of a young bog girl, who as realized later in the poem, was punished for being an “adulteress.” (23) On closer inspection and as the poem shifts from past to present the faith of the bog girl is compared with the faith of another woman in more recent violent times, namely The Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this poem Heaney thus comments, through the use of literary devices such as enjambment, contrast, imagery, metaphors and alliteration and through his diction, on the cruelty of human nature, guilt and on the question of whether we have changed and evolved over time or whether we are still, deep inside, as barbaric and savage

One of the central figures in J. M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" is the barbarian girl. The Magistrate finds the girl maimed and nearly blind after being interrogated and tortured by the ruthless Colonel Joll, and takes her in. The Magistrate's relationship with the girl revolves around his search for the girl's significance; he questions her about her torture, he

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.

It is a common thing: an innocent, kind, humane person joins the military, goes to war, and comes back as a psychological disaster. They either become paranoid, depressed, anything to this nature. However, there are also individuals who go to war with prior psychological conditions. In J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Waiting for the Barbarians”, is reflective of these two situations. In the novel, war breaks out between an Empire and a group of nomads, the barbarians. In between all of this, is the protagonist, the magistrate, a man with a position of power in the military, who opposes the war. Much like actual war, there is an array of different psychological disorders portrayed through the characters, with some characters having disorders before

The apartheid era in South Africa, uprooted the lives of many people who were forced to endure oppressive laws and inequality based on the colour of their skin. It continues to remain a painful memory to those who lost loved ones in their struggle for freedom. In Chris Van Wyk’s novel, Shirley, Goodness & Mercy (2004), he explores fond memories growing up in a township called Riverlea. This township is predominantly occupied by coloured people as a result of segregation laws. Contrary to the negative connotations that apartheid holds, Van Wyk shares the memories which enriched his life during his formation. It is against this setting that I will explore various moments in the novel that contributed to Van Wyk’s views of a pre-apartheid time in his growing up. I will establish this by discussing the given extract, and looking at how he perceived a sense of freedom with his friends, his open state of mind towards knowledge, his outlook on justice and the wrongs that were not evident in his growing up. I will also discuss how it relates to the whole novel.