J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Waiting For The Barbarians, makes predominant use of objectification language in establishing identity. Objectification language is used by the characters in the story to make certain that we, as the reader, have a difficult time avoiding the objectification that the characters themselves are guilty of. Objectification involves creating the identity of the “other” as well as the self in contrast to the other in whatever forms it may take.
Let us begin by looking at Coetzee’s novel itself. It takes place in a fictional world that resembles South Africa. Fictionalization gives us the ability to make poignant messages because the elements are all controllable. Having a completely fictionalized world, certain images cannot take on as much symbolic meaning as one would wish. Coetzee is not just trying to captivate the…show more content… His dealings with the barbarian girl, intimate to the point of being sexual, are no more personal than that between a lab technician and a guinea pig. The Magistrate never even bothers to learn the girl’s name. His desire to help the girl, is patronizing in the extreme.
This kind of objectification language, the “perfect-world” scenario where you're always right, can lead to some thought-provoking realizations, if one understands that it's only fiction, and that the moral “truths” it advocates may not be appropriate to the real world. It is also not the only kind of objectification that Coetzee employs in Waiting…. He also uses the concept of “literary” foreignness to highlight the short-comings of allegory.
It is ironic that objectification is expected to establish “truth” when it may not actually be there while at the same time creating a sense of objectivity that can cause the “truth” to be intangible in the first place. After all, allegory only has truth in regard to itself, and may not actually apply to the real situation it is claiming to
