The Magistrates understanding of the indigenous culture and archaeological hobby create in him a knowledge that is basis for sympathy and his later identification of the defects inherent to the mindset of the Empire. Having lived the majority of his life at the settlement, he has learned much through observation and in his interactive role as magistrate. In particular, his interest as an amateur archaeologist says much about his later attempt at emotionally excavating the layers of trauma and emotion that define the barbarian woman. The ruins in the dunes represent a hobby for him and are yet another way for him to connect with the area and carve out his own place within its history by trying to establish a linear time line to locate himself within. There is a feeling that the settlement exists outside of history, not simply for the effect of ambiguity employed by Coetzee to remove the historical context of this particular chapter of imperialism, but also to illustrate the isolation of such outposts and the settlers feelings of disconnectedness from the realities of the larger world. The physical setting of the narrative, and in particular the use of it in the archaeological dig, also highlight the mood of existing outside of established history. The sands of the desert represent the sands of time, acting as an effective cover for the past which becomes more deeply buried with the encroachment of the Empire and the slow extinction those who could once have carried the lost civilizations story, the dunes cover the ruins of houses that date back to times long before the western provinces were annexed and the fort was built (Coetzee 14).
The Magistrate is an anomaly in his, however casual and recreational, interest in the lost civilization with no record of its existence. However, in his imagining of their history, there is a sense of fear and feeling of eventuality that his own small cultures fate will be the same,
Perhaps in bygone days criminals, slaves, soldiers trekked the twelves miles to the river, and cut down the poplar trees ... transported the timbers back to this barren place in carts and built houses, and a fort too, for all I know, and in the course of time died, so that their masters, their prefects and magistrates and captains, could climb the roofs and towers morning and evening to scan the world from horizon to horizon for signs of the barbarians (Coetzee 15).
The Magistrate and the entire settlement are simply continuations of the rise and fall of history and civilizations. In the above section, the Magistrate addresses the fear at the root of the Empires frontier policies, whereby it works feverishly to stave off the threatened end, an end made more imminent by the historical perception that foresees it (Castillo 81). From the onset, Coetzee wishes to establish the story within this context, and the cruel eventualities and deception of power and control. As settlers, the Magistrate and his neighbors, occupy a distinct role in the spread of imperialism they are representatives of an Empire from which they have been wholly removed but are still expected to emulate and imitate, even as the culture of the area in which they have colonized influences their basic survival from the kind of crops they farm, and how they farm them, to the types of homes they build. This sense of connection acts as a starting point for the Magistrates need to acknowledge the Empires role in the destruction of culture, while also seeking justification of his own complicity in the atrocities of the Empire (Urquhart 4). As an extension of the empire, he must accept a guilt he never fully embraces nor acknowledges, instead hiding behind a search for the truth.
The Magistrates mention of the fear of the barbarians is, as previously noted, essential to an understanding of this pseudo-culture created from the notions of the Empire. Like the other settlers, he has no concrete understanding of the barbarians as people, the nomads are instead opaque (Castillo 82) in their relation to the Magistrate and his unfounded fear of their reprisal. The barbarians immaterial existence is the stuff of imagination for a man so deeply entrenched in the teachings of the Empire as the Magistrate and his fellow settlers. As they live beyond the borders of the Empire and outside history, outside a time of catastrophe (Castillo 82) he is unable to fully connect himself to their historical narrative of being. Instead, the Magistrates identity is solely a matter of conforming to his role, as predicted by by the Empire and his desire for a quiet life, to become another grey-haired servant of Empire who fell in the arena of his authority, face to face at last with the barbarian (Coetzee 16). In this image is the knowledge of long years of limited service to distant idea, that waxes and wanes independently of the actions of a minor official. The grey-haired servant knows the limitations of his power reach only to the gates of the settlement, which prove to be as temporary as life, space is space, life is life, everywhere is the same (Coetzee 16). He sees no escape from his future and is, at least in the beginning, willing to play his role within the larger drama of life as written by the Empire. He can try to understand the barbarians as concepts of uncivilized society and novelties, this is allowed within the ideology of imperialism. However, when he begins to see the indigenous people as humans, and seeks to understand their difference, only to see there is little if any, the Magistrate violates the code of his own small civilization and the lessons of the Empire.
Despite the Magistrates assertion of conscience in defending and protecting the native peoples, he is not immune to the established norms of behavior that characterize the settlers behaviors or even, he notes, the soldiers and Joll. The river people, as the first group of prisoners brought by Joll, are met at first with tolerance and then later with disdain and outright offense. Even the Magistrate describes a desire to be accommodating but not too tolerant of their presence, I do not want a race of beggars on my hands (Coetzee 19). While at first they provide a diversion, with their strange gabbling, their vast appetites, their animal shamelessness, their volatile tempers (19) their novelty soon wears off. The settlers begin to turn against the river people, and though the Magistrate does not participate in the pranks and cruelties he does not try to stop them either. His complacency creates feelings of shame, each new development is met with a resigned feeling of dread. This resignation begins to change as the once placid and predictable surface of the Magistrates life begins to deteriorate. The voice of his conscience begins to whisper in his ear, showing him the inconsistency of his values. As a character, he represents interesting contradictions of morality as Castillo explains, he is a killer who sees himself as a savior, a torturer who rejects identification with others of his kind and represents, in certain respects, as much a symbolic presence for the barbarians as the barbarians are for the colonialists (85). As a citizen of the Empire, living on land that was once free for habitation by any wandering tribe, the Magistrates presence as a settler is more damaging in many respects than the fleeting presence of the soldiers.
Despite the role he plays in the expansion of imperialism, the Magistrate realizes that despite his apathy, he cannot accept the interference of the Empire and its cruelties within this small culture as mere rote, if I resolved to ride out the bad times, keeping my own counsel, I might cease to feel like a man who, in the grip of the undertow, gives up the fight, stops swimming, and turns his face towards the open sea and death (Coetzee 21). He recognizes that to give into the pressures from afar would be to finally give up his individuality and freedom from the Empire, calling into question his youthful motivation to travel to the frontier, which is never addressed in the narrative. While this may simply be to highlight the notion that this is the grey-haired servants narrative, it is more importantly, I believe, a means of illustrating the complete transition of his character. There is no way, with his knowledge of the world beyond the capital and the means by which the Empire expands, for him to regain that innocence, I know somewhat too much and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering (Coetzee 21). The Empire is no longer a distant father but instead has grown into an empire of pain (23) that disturbs the delicate balance on which the colony functions. The Magistrate understands that the events effecting the settlement are not simply a localized phenomena Joll is a cloned foot soldier, who explains to the Magistrate that while the victory at this particular settlement may seem limited, the Empire had made progress, Particularly when you consider that similar investigations are being carried out elsewhere along the frontier in a co-ordinated fashion (Coetzee 23). Though hes always known, the conversation with Joll serves as a brief realization of the territories beyond the Magistrates own small settlement. The inverted viewpoints of the community and Magistrate are particulars of their situation. They have literally come to see their small settlement as the center of a disjointed universe with the Empire characterized as a far-off dream and the wilderness in between as an abyss that hovers just beyond their doorstep.
The Magistrates change in character, while in many ways simply bringing to the surface dormant aspects of a personality grown lazy in its habits, is also a gradual though speedy metamorphosis. Within the space of a year, the Magistrates entire world is violated and turned upside down but in the end returns to its previous routines. The arrival of Joll, the prisoners, the barbarian girls arrival in his life, his travel into the wilderness, his loss of position and his time as a victim of the Empire, and finally the restoration of his position all occur within a single cycle of the seasons. From the beginning, the Magistrate senses these changes and attempts to hide behind a practiced ignorance of the changes to his small world. When Joll leaves for the winter the first time, withdrawing to the safety and familiarity of the capital, the Magistrate is happy for the departure but is left with the fresh scars of the damage inflicted by Joll and his compatriots. He contemplates the damaged people, river people and nomad alike, and the notion of erasing the memory of this misdeed of the Empire crosses his mind, It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people were obliterated from the face of the earth and we swore to make a new start, to run an empire in which there would be no injustice, no pain (Coetzee 24).
However, no matter how ignorant he has made himself to the morals and conventions of imperialism, he cannot erase the world he has seen though it will no doubt be rewritten by those who make policy and history. The cries of the river people and the nomads will go unrecorded in the written records, remaining representations of the unknown that is being destroyed for the betterment of the Empire. Their torture at the hands of Joll reinforces the Magistrates initial thoughts of this group of natives expendibility torture, as a tool of the Empire, means a total negation of a social world that grants life, acts to alleviate their suffering, and does not brand them as beasts, the better to legitimize their extermination (Spencer 175). It proves to be effective, as had the Magistrate been capable of viewing them as his equals, he would likely never have considered such a massive cover up for the sake of convenience and forgetting. However, having seen the injured and dead, cannot escape the reality of history and is instead left wondering at his own service to the continuation of the Empire, I struggle on with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it worth the trouble (Coetzee 25). The Magistrate believes that there must be some kind of long buried redemption in his existence, separate from the offenses of the Empire but realizes as well that he has been created in its image. His relationship with the barbarian girl is a way to reconcile this image within his own personal morality and understanding of the world. She is representative of the Otherness that the Empire seeks to destroy and in her he hopes to find a reason for the rationale by which his entire life has been based upon.
The Magistrates relationship with the barbarian girl is a complicated affair his guilt and propensity for understanding the causes and effects of his small universe, prompt him to look for answers in the pliable and tortured flesh of the girl. Though very different in background and native cultures, they are equally creations of the imperialist notions of the Empire. More than at any other time, the Magistrate identifies with men such as Joll in his attempt to peel away the layers of the girl and discover her differences. Elated by her damaged body, when he first brings the girl to his room, he circles her like an exhibit in a museum and assumes an official stance of power. Through the assertion of his own established role as local official, as she herself is left adrift in the settlement and cut off from her own people, the Magistrate reinforces the invisible line that divides them. He cannot yet see the similarities in their situations and relies on the separation between the colonizer and the Other to help create an identity in relation to the girl. In this way, the Magistrate recognizes that he is no better than the men whod blinded and crippled her, both searching for a truth of their own making, The distance between myself and her torturers, I realized, is negligible (Coetzee 27). Like the Magistrate, Joll and his fellow torturers were looking for a subjective truth to justify their own views. As Stef Craps explains, Joll produces marks of torture on the bodies of his victims only to read these marks as signs of guilt. The only truth that he extracts from the barbarians is the one he has projected onto them (62). They are unable to view the barbarian girl objectively and separately from their focused cause of expansion, instead both the Magistrate and Joll conspire individually to author the colonial other, to impose an identity upon them (Craps 62). The Magistrate approaches the girl with similarly conceived notions that have little to do with her individual trials so much as within her identification within the mechanics of imperialism. However, unlike men such as Joll, the Magistrate is able to realize, what Craps identifies as, the inadequacy of the imperial values and practices (63). He comes to discover in the girl a formerly unrealized depth and resistance to the Empires definition of native identity while also illustrating in his lack of perspective on the girl, a deeply seated resistance to the Empires self-affirmatory endeavor to impose an identity (Craps 63).
The Magistrates realization of the symmetry between his role and that of Joll, does not completely keep his impulses in check. In understanding the barbarian girl, the Magistrate hopes to come to a better understanding of himself. However, he underestimates the damage of the abuse and demoralization exacted upon the young girl, telling her, Nothing is worse than what we can imagine ... dont make a mystery of it, pain is only pain (Coetzee 32). Prior to his own torture, he cannot perceive of the dehumanization at the base of the Empires expansion. He does not yet realize that in his connection to the Empire, as a settler and colonizer, has made him both an accessory and a victim in the stripping of individuality. To the bureaucrats in the capital, the Magistrate is simply another local administrator just as the girl is only a barbarian, neither is viewed within the context of their individual needs or wants but rather their usefulness in imperialistic expansion. The Magistrate gradually comes to understand the physical, emotional, and mental damage exacted through stripping the girl of her father, her culture, and her humanity but does not at first understand his own victimization. Within any cultural definition, the girl has been damaged, she is neither part of her tribe nor the settlement. In a similar way the Magistrate is living a life marooned between two realities, the life proscribed to him as an extension of the Empire and the life he desires, neither of which he belongs to.
The emotional and mental damage of this level of reconstituting an individuals cultural disintegrating, teamed with the persistence of the Magistrates fascination with the girl, creates a bond between the two characters. The Magistrate adapts to his own strange affections and a growing awareness of how the broken pieces of the girls body are only a small representation of the complete break from civilized behavior that characterizes men such as Joll. In their emotional distance from one another, the pair develops a connection from the routine of their parallel lives. What is interesting in the cyclic nature of their relationship is the similarity between the rise and fall in the Magistrates fascination and affection for the girl and the same rise and fall in the Empire and the settlers perception of the indigenous people of the area. Like the fisher people, who were at first a novelty in their newness and then reviled in their inability to mesh seamlessly with the norms of the settlement, the Magistrate develops an aversion to the girl, I cease to comprehend what pleasure I can ever have found in her obstinate, phlegmatic body, and even discover in myself stirrings of outrage (Coetzee 41). Unable to understand her completely, he temporarily turns away to the familiarity of the world hed known before, personified in the bird-like fluttering of the prostitute at the inn. With the play-acting of the blond girl he is able to delude himself into temporarily forgetting his connection to the torture and abuse of the Empire and his own complacency in its dealings. Even faced daily with the barbarian girls presence, the Magistrate attempts to regain his dreaming existence of bygone days when he felt no connection to the cruelties of the world, there is nothing to link me with the torturers ... I must assert my distance from Colonel Joll I will not suffer for his crimes (Coetzee 44). Only when he realizes that he is suffering because of his own crimes, that his own role within the mechanics of imperialism is what is creating his feelings of shame and eventual action, does he turn once more to the girl.
The Magistrates conscience and awareness of his guilt in the damage wrought to the girl is important in illustrating how the Magistrate both embodies and rebels against the notion of a culture of imperialism. He is, as he describes himself as seen through the eyes of the young officer, a minor civilian administrator sunk, after years in this backwater, in slothful native ways, outmoded in his thinking, ready to sacrifice the security of the Empire (Coetzee 51). In his rebellion, he becomes a cliche in the propaganda of the Empire. Rather than being seen as enriched by his realization of the connectivity of all people to a common existence, the Magistrate is viewed as backward and opposed to the Empire itself, His worst suspicion is no doubt confirmed that I am unsound as well as old-fashioned (Coetzee 52). He comes to see that the new surge of interest toward this particular settlement is a development of the growth of the Empire beyond the boundaries of what he had previously imagined and what he can reasonably grasp. In returning the girl to her people, the Magistrate is rebelling against this new growth, hoping to retain a separateness that will allow him to live the life that had been disrupted by Jolls arrival. In addition, he is refusing to accept the Empires idea that the girl does not belong anywhere, not even to her own culture, and is instead damaged goods that has become a part of the secondary system of the hierarchy inherent to the colony. Outside of this structure, outside of their common culture within the settlement, where each fulfills a role imagined for them, the Magistrate and the girl come closer to equality than ever before. In the context of the unknown wilderness, they are finally removed from their own roles within the settlement. They have come to a neutral ground, that allows the girl to rise above the persona created for her in the Magistrates struggle to equalize his uncertain feelings. Sensing this new balance, the Magistrate reacts favorably and makes love to her. He is able to relax and embrace his own desire for her through re-individualizing himself and finding the human connection in his dealings with the girl. He is finally able to see the girls full humanity and feel a connection to her, In twelve days on the road, we have grown closer than in months of living in the same rooms (Coetzee 70). By losing his illusions of her, the Magistrate is able to let her become more than a representation of the Otherness that fuels the contempt of the Empire. In the same way, his own identity is reinforced by his final acceptance of the girl and the reconciliation of his contradictory feelings. As he and the men make their way back to the fort he notes, All I want now is to live out my life in ease in a familiar world, to die in my own bed and be followed to the grave by old friends (Coetzee 75). He has returned, with a little more perspective, to his previous feelings of living a life of ease, separated from the violent influence of the Empires minions.
No matter how reconciled he seems to be in his new feelings toward himself and the girl, the Magistrates return to the settlement marks the beginning of his final showdown with the Empire, I sense a faraway tinge of exultation at the prospect that the false friendship between myself and the Bureau may be coming to an end (Coetzee 77). As an offshoot of the imperialistic vision of community, the Magistrates role is easily turned around to become that of scapegoat. His act of kindness and resolution to reunite the girl with her people become a matter of rebellion and treason. Like the past victims of the Empires violence, the truth becomes relative in their interpretation of morality and blind nationalism. The Magistrates actions have, by their very construction, caused him to set himself in opposition (Coetzee 78) of the workings of the Empire. In the eyes of the Empire, the Magistrate should have maintained his distance and indifference by crossing into the frontier and making contact with the barbarians he has upset the very precept that has fueled imperialist expansion, namely in his recognition of the barbarians humanity and connectedness to himself and other settlers.
The Magistrates recognition of the darkness inherent to the ignorance of a patriotism that spreads and overwhelms such territories prompts him to view the systematized workings of the Empires bureaucracy for the cancer it is. Addressing one of his guards on the construction of the new prison cells, the magistrate quips, time for the black flower of civilization to bloom (Coetzee 79). It is a short-sighted and destructive reworking of the traditions by which the settlement has operated. The actions of the soldiers and the Bureau administrators create havoc in the system of settlement life. As the soldiers begin their attempt to root out traitors and barbarians, they destroy not only the morale of those under their control but also the sustainable relation between the Empire and the settlers. Burning the brush near the river, the Bureau shows its lack of understanding and its unwillingness to adapt to the particular terrain while equally showing an inability to look past th present to the future, They do not care that once the ground is cleared the wind begins to eat at the soil and desert advances. Thus the expeditionary force against the barbarians prepares for the campaign, ravaging the earth, wasting our patrimony (Coetzee 82). As Castillo explains these actions are based, like many of the Empires policies in a fear of the unknown, For men of the Empire, men of the city, open lands represent no less a threat than the imagined barbarian armies, and, just as they torture barbarian captives, so too they destroy the land (81). More important in regards to this discussion on the culture of imperialism, is the fact that through these actions the Empire has not simply destroyed the cover of the barbarians, who as nomads have a broader base of existence and can simply move on to another oasis, they have also destroyed the sustainability of the satellite culture of their own settlement.
The destruction of the world the Magistrate has come to know is shadowed by the destruction of his body and persona as a servant to the Empire. He has become its enemy and will suffer for his understanding of the barbarians, however limited that understanding may be. By learning and growing close to the barbarian girl, the Magistrate has undermined the basis of the culture of imperialism. He has not simply made contact with the barbarian but has come to a deeper realization of truth in defining civilization. In doing so, he has been swept into the depth of its mechanics, where he will become a victim of their systematized cruelties and dehumanizing tactics, They will use the law against me as far as it serves them, then they will turn to other methods. That is the Bureaus way. To people who do not operate under this statute, the legal process is simply on instrument among many (Coetzee 84). While he had previously felt a distance between his own conscience and the edicts of the Empire, he had retained a complacency and acknowledgment of its role in his life. Having passed the limits of the Empire, he is now able to view it as the man made manifestation of an intricate ideology, that is only a model of control and domination. Like a rapist, exacting complete control over its victim, the Empire has dismantled the the individuality of its subjects and the indigenous people it seeks to marginalize within their own land. While the Magistrates relationship and return of the barbarian girl symbolizes his transition from denial to a moral enlightenment, the process of being imprisoned and tortured, bring to light the physicality of humanity. The torture and degradation he experiences is meant to dehumanize him, not simply in his own eyes where he becomes, no more than a pile of blood, bone and meat that is unhappy (Coetzee 85) but also in the eyes of the Bureau officials, the soldiers, and the people of the settlement. His imprisonment removes him from the workings of the community, and usurps his position within the efforts of imperialism. As another type of Other, not easily defined by the constraints of the Empire, the Magistrate comes to be condemned and more easily viewed as subhuman. In viewing him in this manner, the Empire can justify his destruction. Through the torture inflicted by the minions of the Empire, the Magistrate comes to the recognition of the only meaning he can accept unequivocally, the recognition of his own abjection (Castillo 80). In this recognition, the Magistrate comes closest, within the confines of the imperialistic culture, of identifying himself with the Other he has long been taught to despise.
Throughout the physical and mental anguish of his imprisonment, the Magistrate retains a sense of the impermanence of his situation. He is a man, biding my time till this phase of history grinds past and the frontier returns to its old somnolence (Coetzee 95). Like the fear of the barbarians, the seasonal shifts of the nomads, and the changing tides of the politics coming from the capital, the Magistrates position in society follows a cyclic pattern. As Moses notes, The magistrates liberal faith in the progressive potential of history rests upon his conviction that ... he represents a civilized standard of behavior, supported and circumscribed by the rule of law, that must be invoked if the brutalities and injustices of both the barbarians and the Empire are to be checked (119). His premonition of an abatement in the Empires interest in the inhospitable terrain beyond the settlement, and the eventual withdrawal of Joll and the soldiers bares fruit in the end, when the Magistrate returns to his old position within the community on the departure of the soldiers and Bureau men. Behind this eventual, and unofficial reinstatement of position, is the Magistrates understanding that as a product of the settlement he can no longer exist outside of its context. The wilderness beyond the settlement and the urban wilderness of the capital are equally dangerous to his notions of self and the world in general. So removed has he been from the outside turning of time, that the Magistrate would be unable to function outside his present context. He can visualize no resolution that will work within the realities of the world as he has come to know it or that will reconcile with is conscience. Despite his knowledge that the settlement has become a symbol of the inference and destruction of the Empire, the Magistrate realizes that the campaign has drawn on too long for an integrated solution, Easier to lay my head on a block than to defend the cause of justice for the barbarians for where can that argument lead but to laying down our arms and opening the gates of the town to the people whose land we have raped In the mindset central to imperialism, this is neither wise nor inevitable but something to be protected against through the continuation of hate as a means of separation between the indigenous cultures and distinct culture of the settlers.
The Magistrates place within the culture of imperialism is defined not by his work nor the resurgence of conscience that plagues him throughout the novel but instead through his contradictions in fact, it is the nature of the culture of imperialism itself to be contradictory, creating in the Magistrate a characterization of the moral fragmentation of identity at the basis of the settlement. As a culture based on concepts of racial and cultural marginalization, expansion, and the decimation of competing indigenous societies, imperialism is a poison that leaves destruction in its path. The Magistrate provide a fatally flawed example of the good intentions of similar men and women within the context of Empire building. He has a strong understanding of the concepts of right and wrong, knowing that the violence of men such as Joll is neither humane nor just. However, his wish in the end to live outside the history the Empire imposes on its subjects (Coetzee 154) is a reassertion of the culture of the settlement.
While some critics have viewed the narrative within the context of justice and the the narratization of oppression (Urquhart 4). The truths of discovered in the Magistrates examination of self and society become only half realized. In returning to the cycle of living with which he has become accustomed, he remains a product and, ultimately, a tool for the Empire. Despite his defense of the barbarians, his affection for the girl, and his own role as Bureau scapegoat, the Magistrate cannot completely move beyond a mindset shaped by images and propaganda aimed towards separating society along racial and national boundaries. The pseudo-culture of the settlement has been too deeply ingrained into the fabric of his life this frontier is his home, he does not belong culturally to the world beyond his doorstep, but nevertheless belongs to the concept of the settlement. The oasis the settlement is situated upon was once a free area, like the wilderness surrounding it, that was effectively destroyed within the native context by the annexation of the area by a foreign power. His role in imperialism is neither harmed nor altered by his previous incarceration but has been altered by a new awareness which while prompting contemplation, did not in the end cause change. The Magistrate has come full circle, and is lost between the two realities of the Empire and the barbarians as hed been in the beginning, left with feelings of something staring me in the face, and I still do not see it (Coetzee 155). To the Magistrate, the settlements existence is a paradise on earth (Coetzee 154) allowing him to straddle two worlds and exist in the culture and dreams of imperialism, if not its reality.
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