Initial Thoughts on Waiting for the Barbarians

From reading the first few chapters, I took the book Waiting for the Barbarians to be a story of self-growth and of attempts to understand a foreign culture. The Magistrate, the main character, learns from both his “civilized” associates and more importantly from the barbarian whom he grows to love more deeply than anything in his life. Throughout the novel, images of dark eyes or glasses represent the Magistrate’s struggle to grow and deal with the insecurities he has developed in the last few years. The Magistrate’s relationship with Colonel Joll is one of little understanding because of their difference of opinions regarding the barbarians. While Colonel Joll and the rest of the Empire seek to destroy the barbarian race, the Magistrate seeks to understand them. Colonel Joll’s opaque glasses and the girl’s dark eyes allow the Magistrate to look into himself and form his own opinions on the situation with the natives.

The native girl, blinded by the torture of Colonel Joll’s men, also serves as a tool of self-growth. Through his cathartic relationship with her, he not only decisively sides with the natives but only restores the manliness he felt had been missing in his life, though the restoration is not an easy process. The whore and the native girl play off each other due to the similarities, yet obvious differences of their relationship with the Magistrate. While the whore provides a momentary reassurance of his manhood, only the enduring relationship with the barbarian girl has the ability to completely restore it. In my opinion, the two contrasting relationships also set up a representation of his connections with the Empire verses the currently misunderstood native world. While the whore has obviously been in his life for a while, just as the Empire has been for his entire life, only the girl and the native world provide him with excitement and stir his emotions. When the native girl exists in his life, life is restored to his otherwise dying soul. In the end, I believe his connection with the girl will overshadow his ties with the Empire, the whore, thus creating problems between him and the state.

His journey to return the girl to her people also serves as a tool in the Magistrate’s understanding of the native world. While the native’s connection with the land is obvious through the girl’s face, the men’s struggle shows their lack of connection, thus contrasting the two civilizations. The Magistrate also gains more understanding of the girl, and thus her world, though his goal of understanding her is not completely achieved.

While the sentences are short and the diction simple, the arrangement of the words and the overall style of the writing make each sentence full of meaning. Few sentences are straight-forward in their connotation and many connections between different scenes are necessary for understanding the novel fully. Overall, I really enjoy the book and can’t wait to see how the love between the Magistrate and the girl plays out, and thus the relationship between the two enemy worlds resolves itself. (509)