Part 2

Spatial (capital – settlement – frontier and beyond)

Behavior (acting civilized)

Appearance (physical traits and poverty)

Young woman as interpreter. “We have crossed the limits of the empire. It is not a moment to take lightly.”

At the meeting, the Magistrate asks, “Blind: what is the word for blind?” (69)

“What a waste,” I think: “she could have spent those long empty evenings teaching me her tongue!” (70)

Page 70

“Speak to them,” I tell her. “Tell them why we are here. Tell them your story. Tell them the truth.”

She looks sideways at me and gives a little smile. “You really want me to tell them the truth?”

Language and TruthMagistrate as a Changing/Aging FigureGender and inequalityMagistrate’s Desire in relation to Sexual

DesireMagistrate’s (narrator’s) inability to writeRelationship of the novel to author and

readersWriting without leading somewhere

Page 5:“How do you ever know when a man has told you the truth?”

“There is a certain tone,” Joll says…“The tone of truth!...”

“Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt. That is what I bear away from my conversation with Colonel Joll...”

“I bellow again and again, there is nothing I can do to stop it, the noise comes out of a body that knows itself damaged perhaps beyond repair and roars its fright.” (119)

“He is calling his barbarian friends,” someone observes. “That is barbarian language you hear.” There is laughter. (119)

Reads the classicsCatalogues his collectionsMakes maps (and collates them)Goes to archeological siteVisits women (and he is the one that discusses this among his passions)

“The distance between myself and her torturers, I realize, is negligible; I shudder.” (27)

“a jackal of Empire in sheep’s clothing!” (71)

The Magistrate visits a brothel and he has access to the women in the town.

Page 22:“I feel a quiet affection for her which is

perhaps the best that can be hoped for between an aging man and a girl of twenty; better than a possessive passion certainly. I have played with the idea of asking her to live with me. “

How does sexual desire connect to a part of the Magistrate’s life that has passed?Age?Privilege?An attitude of disregard?Manipulation of his surroundings?Notion of male superiority

Foot washing as a religious rite

PAGE 28

“I lose myself in the rhythm of what I am doing… I am not event present…my head droops.”

Page 42

“I have just come from the bed of a woman for whom, in the year I have known her…the secret body of the other.”

“Not only that; there were unsettling occasions when in the middle of the sexual act I felt myself losing my way like a storyteller losing the thread of his story.” (44)

“a man who does not know what to do with the woman in his bed should not know what to write.” (57)

Metaphor takes over: “in which events are not themselves but stand for other things” (39)

Inability to make sense of the changing Empire and his role in it

Unable to interpret the young woman

“It has been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her.” (31)

“I have been trying to remember you as you were before all of this happened.” (48)

“I also found a cache of wooden slips on which are painted characters in a script I have not seen the like of.” (14)

“Now, in the hope of deciphering the script, I have set about collecting all the slips I can, and have let the children who play here know that if they find one it is worth a penny.” (14-15)

Magistrate’s difficulty - deciphering himself, wooden slips, and the experience of the woman.

Reader’s difficulty - placing events and limited access to the torture.

Coetzee’s commitment to tell a story that neither ignores torture nor represents it in a realistic way.

“For the writer the deeper problem is not to allow himself to be impaled on the dilemma proposed by the state, namely, either to ignore its obscenities or else to produce representations of them. The true challenge is how not to play the game by the rules of the state, how to imagine torture and death on one’s own terms.”

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/home/coetzee-chamber.html

“I look into his clear blue eyes, as clear as if there were crystal lenses slipped over his eyeballs. He looks back at me. I have no idea what he sees.” (115)

“as my feet leave the ground I feel a terrible tearing in my shoulders as though whole sheets of muscle are giving way.” (119)

*I think: “I wanted to live outside the history that Empire imposes on its subjects, even its lost subjects.” (151)

*I think: “I have lived through an eventful year, yet understand no more of it than a babe in arms. Of all the people of this town I am the one least fitted to write a memorial.” (151)