Rating: 
Summary: Empire in the Snow
Review: The story Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee is directed towards an audience that reads deeply, and thoughtfully. As a student I found that it was necessary to read different passages many times over because of his consistent usage of figurative language. In his story Coetzee uses two different techniques to do an exquisite job of conveying his story. The story that he tells portrays to us the reader how the Empire can corrupt and manipulate anyone.
In Waiting for the Barbarians, the final line is, "Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere"(156). The way I interpret this quote is that the Magistrate is saying that work for any object that lacks justice and common decency is wrong and is a lost cause. Even though I the quote I chose isn't structured as deeply as many of the others in his book are it still contains an element of complexity.
One of the two techniques that Coetzee uses is not naming anything except for Joll. When I started to read the story I noticed that Coetzee never once refers to where the Empires origin is, nor does it he ever call the Magistrate by anything but 'the Magistrate.' The lack of names doesn't only apply to the 'civilized' people, but also to the 'Barbarians.' I think that this adds an incredible element to the story because the different titles like the 'Barbarians,' and the 'Empire' could represent any number of different civilizations. And while some people may believe he is talking about specific civilizations they would be wrong.
The second technique that Coetzee uses is the dreams. Most of what the reader learns in this story comes out of what is learned through them. "I am trudging across the snow of an endless pain towards a group of tiny figures playing around a snow castle"(37). This quotes shows how the Empire is centered around itself. The idea that even the children should be working to expand an overwhelming force is wrong and frightening. Later on in the story after a few more dreams Coetzee writes, "A dead parrot: I hold it by the tail, its bedraggled feathers hang down, its soggy wings droop, its eyes sockets are empty. When I release it, it falls through the surface without a splash"(149). In this passage the reader can derive a representation for each object mentioned here. For example the parrot is a figurative representation of the town and its people. A parrot is a bird that repeats everything, and on top of that the parrot has no eyes, which means it cannot tell bad from good. The water obviously is a representation of the Empire is showed through the characteristics of the water, murkiness and lack of signs of life are some of these characteristics.
The final dream in this story says, "My footsteps crunch with...They settle on the shoulders and fill it out with pebbles for eyes, ears, nose and mouth. One of them Crowns it with his cap"(155). After the children had finished making their own little Empire they started to make people to fill it up. Personally what I pull from the first dream that I mention and the last one is that the people of the Empire have taught their children that they must conquer those that are weak and crush them. Also it seems as though the children have been taught to make all the people of their domains the same. The teachings of the children's parents come from what their parents taught them when they were young which is also frightening. A subtle thing that I noticed is that in the beginning of the story the Magistrate is trudging around, but here at the end he is lifted up in spirit and therefore his feet are only brushing the ground.
Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee gets many points across to the reader. One of these being that regimes of force can often stretch the law until it breaks and even then continue on in its unlawful manners of activity. Also the reader gets a good idea of what it would be like to have to deal with the idea that tomorrow could be your last in before your world is turned upside down which is what happens to the Magistrate.
Rating: 
Summary: Who are the barbarians?
Review: I found Coetzee's novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, to be a thought-provoking, yet at times unsatisfying novel. The storyline has an interesting plot: The eventual deterioration of the Magistrate's conduct in his duties leads to an act of rebellion, labeling him a prisoner of the Empire. However, the plot is drawn out almost to the point of being tedious to read at certain points. For instance, the account of his journey into the land of the Barbarians is spread throughout a few chapters, but it contains dull information that could easily have been done in one chapter.
Even though I found the pace of the book to be drawn-out, the premise is rather startling. The Empire makes a false enemy of the so-called Barbarians so that it can justify its brutality and achieve power. The Magistrate witnesses the torture of this group of people, but he does not consider them guilty of any crime. The book deals with the inner-workings of the moral obligations of an individual, which, in the Magistrate's case, almost leads to near self- destruction. In a sense, he turns himself in to the officials and ends up in jail.
The description of the Magistrate's behavior is vivid, so the reader is able to understand his character. On the other hand, you never get a clear picture of the barbarians, the Empire's officials, and even the Empire itself is vague. Because we never fully understand where or the when the setting takes place, the reading can become monotonous.
Overall, Waiting for the Barbarians was an intriguing book, but one that requires further insight than a simple free read.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for The Barbarians
Review: Waiting for the Barbarians, is a fascinating novel by J.M. Coetze that uses lots of imagery to attract the reader. It is a book with many underlying messages, such as Jolls' glasses, and the Magistrates dreams. This enchanting novel makes you pay close attention to the text, and think a lot about themes such as truth and honesty. It is about a peaceful Magistrate, who loses all of his power to the Empire. The Magistrate disagrees with the harsh and unjust treatment of the so-called "barbarians." He eventually becomes fond of one of the prisoners, and begins to care for her needs. The Empire sees what is going on with him and the Barbarian, and marks him as a traitor. He is literally forgotten by the people and becomes subject to the harsh and violent ways of the Empire. In actuality, the Empire itself looks at him as a Barbarian. To the attentive reader, they understand that the Barbarians are never involved in any barbaric actions, yet the Empire is the one doing all of the torture and gruesome acts. The Empire tries to expand its territory by stretching throughout the wilderness, concluding that everyone inferior to them is a barbarian and will be subject to harsh punishments. Eventually rumors of hoards of barbarians seeking revenge on the empire are brought to the soldier's insight. The frontier erupts into a state of panic. Once things become tough around the settlement and the soldiers are beginning to get bored of destroying the town, the Empire leaves, and the Magistrate, who was once labeled a traitor returns to controlling the small frontier, in the same manner that he did earlier on in the book. It is apparent that the message Coetzee is sending to the reader is that the Empire are the true barbarians, and the so- called barbarians are not killers at all, they are just looked upon like this because of their inferior ways and different looks. I enjoyed this book, and would suggest it to anyone who is looking to read outside the lines.
Rating: 
Summary: *
Review: The underlying story of a faceless empire that crosses generations cunningly depicts not only the brutality and lack of order of large empires, but also in individuals. Our physical being, and the usage of pain, are contemplated as the only truths. The search for truth through fear and pain are started with the language such as this, "the tone of truth! Can you pick up the tone in everyday speech? Can you hear weather I'm telling the truth? ...No, you misunderstand me. I am speaking only of a special situation now, I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it." There is the magistrate, the hero of our story, talking with the only named man, the truly faceless torturer who believes in the unconditional power of the empire. Pain is graphically used as the medium for conveying the sick and twisted feeling that haunt each of us at our very core. Coetzee even forsakes the innocence of children to drive in the bitter nail. The quest for freedom from this beast pulls the Magistrate in every direction. Desperation to discover the Magistrate free from the nightmare keeps you turning the pages and hardly lets you put it down.
The story is able to generate convincing tension between the desire for luxuries and the need for self-purification. His problems are always believable, and you will constantly feel a sort of bond with the man whose only identity associates him with the being you find yourself absolutely detesting. You should not read this book if you are searching for some form of self redemption, but rather an deep analysis of the demons that live in us. An excellent intertwining of a shallow story line and deep realizations. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: The Second Dickens
Review: Moana Casanova Not everyone can appreciate Coetzee's writing style, and if you don't, then you will find this book incredibly boring and drawn-out. It is easy to get lost in his words because of the extensively unnecessary detail. It felt like Dickens in Great Expectations all over again.
It is also rather difficult to find what his point is. To me it was 160 pages of irrelevant drivel that I could not express much concern for. For instance, he describes his journey to return the girl back to the Barbarians. He just carries on to the point where he loses the initial central theme. However, you may find it necessary to dig deeper if you want to find answers to the many posed questions. Most of these questions are "why?" The Magistrate engages in many affairs that seem completely random and an in depth reading is required in order to understand his motives. Once you take this novel to the next level, you may find that this book is about self-discovery, rebellion, and the nature of oppression.
If there is any one thing that is decent about this book, it's that its details and descriptions are vague enough that the circumstances can be applied to many other similar situations that have occurred throughout history. This permits the reader to take the novel in many different directions, also leaving it very open for interpretation. The reader does not know what empire Coetzee is talking about, or what exact time period or which barbarians.
Coetzee talks about some heavy matter that adolescents will not understand or appreciate. It is easy to underestimate this book if you just take it at face value. It requires an extensive analysis in order to comprehend all that it addresses.
Rating:
Summary: A book with great style and life lessons
Review: The story Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee deals with the human mind and the ability for humans to make decisions. He has placed the main character the Magistrate in a situation in where he has to make a decision about how he wants to live his life and what kind of person he wants to be. The Magistrate goes on a journey mentally and physically into the history of his time. Throughout the story there is a struggle by the barbarians to live in a society in which there are looked down upon and oppressed. The Magistrate is the only one in the empire who sees this oppression and this is his struggle between his easy life that the empire has provided and the truth of reality that he has seen. The book does a good job in dealing with feeling such as guilty, pity, love and ignorance. Coetzee is able to write with great style in 150 short pages one the greatest dilemmas that man has to deal with. The story is about a struggle between what you like and what is good. This is a book to read if you are looking for a deeper meaning book.
Rating:
Summary: A novel which satisfies both ends of the spectrum
Review: This is definitely, in my opinion, Coetzee's finest work yet. He accurately portrays the tyrannical mindset of empires as wholes, yet he might draw out the narrators internal struggle with freedom. This is shown by the fact that we first hear about the narrators journey to self-discovery in the first few pages, which is not resolved till nearly the very end. This troubles me simply because I don't believe that this is the main struggle that Coetzee is trying to portray. Coetzee makes up for this literary mishap by using language unparalleled to by any novel, "...stop my ears to the noise of patriotic bloodlust.", is just one of many quotes that filled my soul with emotion I cannot yet explain. He shows just enough, yet leaves the right amount a mystery, making this a perfect novel for classroom interpretation. To all of you out there who choose to come along for the ride, stay with the book and read it carefully, for in the end all your questions will be answered. For added pleasure, read this literary masterpiece with a light merlot, and you will find a Rembrandt on paper.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the Barbarians Review
Review: Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians describes a man's struggle between the Empire's rule and himself. The protagonist finds himself facing the harsh realities of the Empire he works for as a Magistrate. He witnesses brutal killings and persecution of so-called barbarians, who are threatening the Empire. Through his relationship with a young Barbarian girl, he realizes the how immoral the Empire is. He is left to decide whether he wants to go against the Empire and forgo the luxuries it gives or go against the Empire's racism towards Barbarians.
Waiting for the Barbarians started slowly. I found it hard to follow and repetitive. The writing felt longwinded and too detailed. As I got further and further into the book, I began to follow and understand the Magistrate's struggle. The different pieces of the story began to fit together. The relationship between the Barbarian and the Magistrate particularly peaked my interest and intrigued me. I found their relationship extremely odd and I wondered whether I had ever witnessed a relationship like this. From the beginning of this intriguing relationship, it felt like a faster read and more interesting. I began to sympathize with the woes of the characters. In the end I finished the book completely satisfied. I felt like the ending was particularly strong especially the way Coetzee tied in all the Magistrate's dreams in the end.
I'd recommend this book for a reader willing to wait out the laborious beginning and look into the struggles of society. The end is well worth the beginning!
Rating:
Summary: paradoxical
Review: The imagery, archetypes and situations which Coetzee uses to form his allegory are fairly obvious : the Empire stands for Afrikaner-ruled South Africa; the barbarians are the blacks of South Africa; the Magistrate, as evidenced by the ritual ablutions he performs, his time in the desert and his near crucifixion, is a Christ figure; and the Empire's officials, as evident in the final passage above, are as much prisoners of the repressive system of laws as are the barbarians. But it strikes me, reading the book twenty years after it was first published, how much the story depends on the reader to insert, South Africa, Apartheid, Afrikaners, blacks, etc. into the structure of the allegory in order for it to work. Taken purely on it's own terms, the book is somehow too detached from the subjects under discussion to have too powerful an effect on us. In some ways it just inhuman. Other than the Magistrate, none of the characters seem more than caricatures. The Empire is so distant and the barbarians so mysterious that we have no basis on which to judge the rival cultures. Of course, we all find torture and repression repellent, but even such horrific methods may be a lesser evil than the system which the oppressed would impose were they to triumph over the oppressor. The final impact of the novel then is paradoxical. Where allegory typically universalizes a story, here it particularizes the tale. It succeeds as an extended meditation on the moral obligations of an individual, especially an official, who is uncomfortable about his nation's legal system and opposes the techniques used by his government. It evens succeeds in convincing us that the Empire is making a mistake in torturing these victims. But overall the story is so divorced from reality and has so few characters who resemble our fellow human beings that it has very little general applicability to the broader world outside the covers of the book. Perhaps the best comparison is to George Orwell's magnificent short story, Shooting an Elephant. Orwell takes one entirely specific, seemingly insignificant incident and convinces us that a system, Colonialism, which would require that he shoot an elephant merely in order to perpetuate the system itself, is perforce illegitimate. He brilliantly extracts a universal message out of particular circumstances. It's hardly fair to judge another author against such an exacting standard as George Orwell, but Coetzee's novel does conspicuously fail to achieve this kind of universality. GRADE: B-
Rating:
Summary: Campaign against terrorism
Review: This is a brilliant book - and I wish all Western politicians had read it before starting their campaign against terrorism; for the novel can be read as the story of one such campaign. The enemy, the barbarians, the terrorists, remains elusive. The Secret Service torture natives, people who still talk to members of the enemy tribes are vilified, an expeditionary force is beaten not by the enemy but by the merciless mountain deserts were the barbarians live. All of this creates a background of panic in the border town where the story is set. People start running away, the town is ruled by pillaging military - who finally flee as well. In the end the town is ruined, most probably without any direct intervention of enemy forces. Coetzee has unmasked the self-destructiveness of war.
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