J. M. Coetzee Foe (3)

1
J. M. Coetzee Foe (3)

• Writing, Identity and History

2
Outline

• Structure of the Novel
• Starting Questions (1)
• Story-telling and writing
• Susans desire purposes
• Her story-telling and
• Her writing vs. Foes
• The central mysteries
• Ways of making sense of the past
• Starting Questions (2)
• Friday and his language
• Diving into the Wreck
• Conclusion

3
Foe Structure

• Chap 1 her experience on the island (Bartons
  speech to Foe)
• Chap 2 Barton and Friday in London (epistolary
  form--Writing To Foe )
• in Clock Lane, writing letters to Foe (talking
  to him about authorship and going into his
  house)
• Foes attic in Newington still waiting
• the young girl pp. 72 77
• Friday in his mopes Ss Speech to Friday 79-87
  
• To Foe pp. 87 on writing
• To the forest with the girl 89
• To Foe -- Robe and Fridays dance
• Attempts to teach Friday music 95- 98
• Journey to Bristol to set Friday free without
  success 99- (dangers met on the road) //but
  gaining strength from dancing. 103

4
Foe Structure

• Chap 3 Barton Friday in Foes hiding place,
  Struggle for authorship (Bs narration)
• Susan and Foe
• discussion of plot
• Three parables of women and writing 1) death-bed
  confession 2) daughter as a way to extend ones
  life 3) Bartons Muse as both goddess and
  begetter
• Meeting the girl again
• Muse and sex
• Fridays silence --
• The untold stories buried in Friday
• teaching him to write Africa, House Mother

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Foe Structure

• Chap 4 from Foes attic to dive into the sea
  wrecks a first-person narration
• Repetition
• in the attic and under the sea
• listening for Fridays voice.
• Variation from voices of the island to an
  ongoing stream

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Starting Questions (1)

• Susan Barton as a character and writer
• Why does she say that she is a woman without
  substance? (51) Why does she have to get the
  story of the island written down? (58)
• What do you think of her rejection of the young
  girl named Susan Barton? (e.g. 72-76 91)
• As one producing letters and paintings, what
  does she think about artistic representation?
• Island everywhere how do we deal with our own
• Island-isolation (71) confinement (81)
• lack of knowledge about the past (e.g. 83- 87)
• Emptiness substance of existence. (51 82
  152)

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Bartons Desire and Purposes

• Sense of urgency, getting the story told is her
  primary concern
• Purposes
• Meaning of her existence
• Memory longing for the island (home 50)
• Survival thru communication and sympathy
  (against emptiness and lethargy/sleep 82) p. 85
  (tongue//heart)
• Fame and Immortality
• Money to survive and to send Friday back to
  Africa
• Identity Self-Determination acquire
  substance of her identity (51) not just a
  fictional character

8
Barton as a story-teller (review)

• sense of immediacy
• address to you Foe, the girl, Friday
• expecting audience response (7)
• Re-telling the stories to remember them
  (repetition p. 5 11 Fridays tongue)
• Wants her story to be truthful 40 acknowledge
  her ignorance.
• imagine things into existence p. 49 51-53,
  60, etc. (? the novel as a re-vision)

9
Barton as a writer/painter

• self-reflexive and aware of multiple
  interpretation
• Moment to assume writing position p. 65 to deny
  Foes ability to invent p. 72
• Avoid over-dramatizing her story p. 67 (vs.
  Foes adding the daughter plot and cannibal)
• Need to explain Fridays loss of tongue (blank
  page) ? multiple interpretation (Cruso or slave
  trader, mutilation or tribal customs)
• Two paintings Fridays past pp. 68-69 84-
• Needs responses e.g. the use of kiss and
  desire in communicating with Friday p. 79-81

10
Bartons writing reconstruction

• Like their work on the terraces 87
• Like a painter a. adding hues to show
  contrast//selecting, composing and rendering
  particulars. B. divining and teasing out of the
  episodes their hidden meanings
• Establishing the poles, the here and there, and
  then the words take form, journey and flow. ?
  easy 93

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Bartons writing vs. Foes

• Foes -- the more dramatic elements cannibal,
  musket, carpenters chest, younger Cruso, love
  for Barton p. 83
• Susan wants to be her own author
• different plots reunion of mother and daughter,
  or survival on an island
• Chap 3 p. 129 meets the young girl with her
  nurse Amy ? struggle for authorship/ownership

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Bartons authorship vs. Foes

• The daughter episode
• p. 131 I am a free woman who asserts her freedom
  by telling her story according to her own
  desire.
• (p. 133 daughter like ghost coming back to life
  -- losing her sense of authorship ) now all my
  life grows to be story and there is nothing of my
  own left to me.
• Three stories ? muse as begetter
• Sex Foes preying on the living
• p. 150 Foe as a slaver turning his deaf ear to
  Susan
• p. 152 Susan thinks of Foe as a mistress, as a
  wife.

13
Acknowledges her lack of understanding

• The central mysteries pp. 83- 87
• the terraces like tombs
• The tongue pp. 84
• Fridays submission
• No desire
• The scattering of petals

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Ways of making sense of the past

• Foe p. 135 -- also lost in the maze of
  doubting
• Make a sign of ones blindness and return to it
  all the time.
• plant a sign or marker in the ground where I
  stand so that in my future wanderings I shall
  have something to return to, . . .the more often
  I come back to the mark, . . .the more certainly
  I know I am lost. . . (135-36)

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Starting Questions (2)

• What do you think about the depiction of Friday?
  Should he be so mute and irresponsive? And
  Susans attempt to teach him? (e.g. p. 98 her
  failure)
• Is their lack of communication more realistic
  than, say, that between Pocahontas and John
  Smith?
• What do you think about the ending? Who is the
  narrator? Why is it repetitive?

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Friday and his language/silence

• Multiple interpretation of his (lack of) response
• (1) Forever enslaved
• After the unnatural years with Cruso, he is
  like an animal wrapt entirely in itself (70)
• eternal obedience? 98

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Friday and his language/silence

• (2) His silence loss
• Tongue (vs. heart) a member of play (85)
• defenseless silence (p. 121)
• (3) His silence his defense
• Like a whale and a spider p. 59
• Connection to the time before Cruso p. 60 true
  stories buried in him (118)

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Fridays languages Identity

• (4) Has his languages but cannot communicate with
  them
• Dance 92
• Bass recorder
• Dance like Friday 103-104understanding him
  seeing 119

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Teaching Friday

• Teaching him to write is teaching him whites
  language a way to establish identity?
  (logo-centric?)
• Susanunderstands sympathizes with him, and
  acknowledges her lack of complete understanding
• Is he stupid or laughing at me? 146
• Foe not teaching him is to keep his desires
  dark to us
• Susan He desires to be liberated, and I do
  too. 148

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Fridays languages identity

• Susan teaches him but questions language
• How does he know freedom? How is Friday to
  recover his freedom? Are we free?
• There will always be a voice in him to whisper
  doubts, whether in words or nameless sounds or
  tunes or tones. (149)
• Friday is not free, but he is not in subjection.
  150

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Diving into the Wreck Three Times

• (p. 142 It is for us to open Fridays mouth and
  hear what it holds silence, perhaps, or a roar,
  Foe. Who?)
• to Foes house
• P. 155 With a sigh to the book, then the house
  and then the island
• P. 155 With a sigh to the wrecked ship.

22
Diving into the Wreck artistic re-vision of
the silenced

• The couple
• 1st -- straw-and-paper-like existence their
  bodies not touching
• 2nd A plague of the author with writing too
  small to read ? the couple facing each other,
  Susans head in Foes arm. ? entangling sea
  weeds
• 3rd Susan and the captain, hands held out in
  blessing a place where bodies are their only
  signs.

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Diving into the Wreck Three times

• Friday
• 1st F with a faint pulse the narrator ignore
  his heartbeat to listen to Friday.
• 2nd -- Scar on his neck (Susans writing)
• ? the narrator diving to see the kraken, shark
  (or a guardian wrapped in rotting fabric)
• ? Susan and the captain
• He opens his mouth.
• Why the sea but not the island, or Africa? ? the
  Middle Passage

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Conclusion

• In re-writing a colonial history, Coetzee uses an
  author-surrogate (Susan Barton) to make us/him
  understand more about
• the various aspects of living on an island, and
  different ways (rational order with yearning,
  understanding and attempts at communication and
  escape) of survival
• the interrelation between Writing and Power on
  the one hand, and silence and absence on the
  other.
• the omission and dramatization of traditional
  colonial narratives.
• English or verbal language is not the only
  language for communication.

25
Crusoe in England

• I felt a deep affection for the smallest of my
  island industries.
• No, not exactly, since the smallest was a
  miserable philosophy.
• Because I didn't know enough.
• Why didn't I know enough of something? Greek
  drama or astronomy?
• The books I'd read were full of blanks the
  poems--well, I tried reciting to my iris-beds,
  "They flash upon that inward eye, which is the
  bliss..."the bliss of what?

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Crusoe in England

• Friday was nice. Friday was nice, and we were
  friends. If only he had been a woman! I wanted to
  propagate my kind,