J. M. Coetzee Foe (3)

1
J. M. Coetzee Foe (3)

• Writing, Identity and History

2
Outline

• Starting Questions
• Structure of the Novel
• 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
• Friday and his language
• Diving into the Wreck

3
Starting Questions

• What do you think of Susan Bartons rejection of
  the young girl named Susan Barton?
• What do you think about the depiction of Friday?
  Should he be mute and irresponsive?
• What do you think about the ending? Who is the
  narrator? Why is it repetitive?
• How do we deal with our own
• Island-isolation (71) confinement (81)
• lack of knowledge about the past
• Emptiness substance of existence. (82 152)

4
Foe Structure

• Chap 1 her experience on the island (Bartons
  speech to Foe)
• Chap 2 Barton and Friday in London (epistolary
  form)
• in Clock Lane,
• Foes attic writing letters to Foe waiting
• the young girl pp. 72 77
• Speech to Friday 77-87
• 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- 97
• Set Friday free

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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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Bartons Desire and Purposes

• Sense of urgency, getting the story told is her
  primary concern
• Purposes
• Memory longing for the island
• Survival
• Fame and Immortality
• Money to send Friday back to Africa
• Identity acquire substance of her identity
  (51) not just a fictional character

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Bartons story-telling

• 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)
• imagine things into existence p. 49 53, 61,
  etc.
• Wants her story to be truthful 40 acknowledge
  her ignorance.

9
Bartons writing multiple interpretation
(applications)

• Moment to assume writing position p. 65
• Need to explain Fridays loss of tongue (blank
  page) ? multiple interpretation (Cruso or slave
  trader, mutilation or tribal custom)
• Two paintings Fridays past pp. 68-69 84-
• The use of kiss and desire in communicating
  with Friday p. 79-81

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Bartons writing reconstruction

• Like their work on the terraces 87
• Like a painter adding hues to show contrast
  //episodes and their hidden meanings
• Establishing the poles, the here and there ? easy
  93

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Bartons writing vs. Foes

• the more dramatic elements cannibal, musket,
  carpenters chest, younger Cruso, love for Barton
  p. 83

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Bartons writing vs. Foes

• 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.

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

18
Fridays languages Identity

• (3) 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?
• Susanunderstands 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

20
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 Twice

• (p. 142 It is for us to open Fridays mouth and
  hear what it holds silence, perhaps, or a roar,
  Foe. Who?)
• People
• straw-and-paper-like existence their bodies
• A plague of the author with writing too small
  to read

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Diving into the Wreck Three times

• Friday
• His heart, his body,
• 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
• What is this ship? ? the Middle Passage