Decolonization is more difficult than simply removing the physical presence of the colonizer. Colonialism impacts on a multitude of levels in the lives of both the colonizer and the colonized; the prospect of undoing years of institutionalized and officiated colonial control is a daunting challenge. J.M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians attempts to address the issue of decolonization through the mindset of the central colonizing character, the nameless magistrate, exploring the difficulties that arise when poor leadership, uncertain morality and ineffective idealism mix in a colonial context in evolution. Waiting for the Barbarians presents complete decolonization as an impossible ideal due to ineffective leadership, focusing on the role of the Magistrate as a hopeless harbinger for the process whose motives are questionable and who succumbs to the pitfalls of sympathetic liberal thinking. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As the leader of the small border settlement in which most of the novel is set, the Magistrate appears to be, at best, a barely competent leader. At the beginning of the novel the Magistrate does not appear to be a likely catalyst for decolonization. He appears to have the most rudimentary level of power, and, at the very beginning of the novel, his small authority is overtaken by the cruel and crooked Colonel Joll of the Third Bureau. Joll is throughout the novel seen by the magistrate as the symbol of every cruel and unjust aspect of colonial rule, torture, deception and willful blindness are the main tools Joll uses to advance the interests of the Empire. A conversation between Joll and the magistrate, the two central figures of power within the novel, regarding the process of torture to extract admissions of guilt reveals the absolute power of colonial rule which is summarized through Joll: "There is a certain tone ", Joll says. “A certain tone enters the voice of a man who speaks the truth. Training and experience teach us to recognize that tone. […] First I get lies, you see – that's what happens – first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the breakup, then more pressure, then the truth.”'[1]For Joll, and colonialism itself, the intended outcome of torture is not truth, but rather justification. Joll hears what he wants to hear and doesn't care about objective truths. As the Magistrate notes: «Pain is truth; everything else is subject to doubt.' [Coetzee, pp. 5] The Empire does not need objective truth to proceed and extend its colonial rule, but rather needs false admissions of guilt where "pain is truth" to provide the image of righteous motivations. Colonial rule does not need an honestly justified basis to exist. Colonialism exists through cruelty as the failure of just government. Suffering is integral to the existence of colonialism, and both Joll and the Magistrate as agents of the Empire recognize this and the Magistrate is guiltily aware that, just like Joll, he himself is a symbol of the Empire's cruel rule. As Jane Poyner notes, the Magistrate 'realizes that the distance between him and the vile Joll is not […] so great.'[2] The Magistrate, though appalled by Joll's barbarity, is powerless to intervene. Instead he faces the consequences of Joll's torturous exploits, tending the bodies of the dead and healing those Joll leaves mutilated as best he can. The Magistrate has no authority to stop Joll's atrocities; his job is not to act as a savior but to"collect tithes and taxes, administer the communal lands, provide for the garrison, supervise junior officers" and similar administrative positions. [Coetzee, pp. 8] Offended by Joll's cruelty towards two prisoners, the Magistrate confronts Joll, setting out the case for their release before noting that "I realize that I am pleading with them in vain. [Coetzee, pp. 4] The Magistrate has no power to change Joll's opinion of his two prisoners, his helplessness underlined by the meekness insinuated by the 'pleading' As well as being helpless in stopping Joll and the atrocities of the Empire in general, the Magistrate is often presented as uninterested in doing more than is expected of him: "I am a country magistrate, a responsible official in the service of the Empire, spending my days on this lazy frontier , waiting to retire.' [Coetzee, pp. 8] There is an apathy in his tone, a hollowness that suggests both a lack of ambition and an apathetic attitude towards his work. Words like "responsible," "service," "lazy," and "waiting" create the image of a character without higher goals and uninteresting, or, at the very least, aspiring to little: "When I die I hope to deserve three lines of small print in the imperial gazette. I asked for nothing but a quiet life in quiet times.' [Coetzee, pp. 8] Within the Magistrate is the opposite of greatness, an unextraordinary man who wants nothing more than to be forgotten along with his times. He has no intention of opposing Joll or the Empire, either formalizes any solid beliefs about colonial rule. Both are without power or motivation to achieve decolonization. At the beginning of the novel, Coetzee does not envelop the magistrate in the traditions of heroism; imperial rule, nor does he act altruistically on behalf of those he rules. Instead, Coetzee presents a colonial everyman, a Kafkaesque bureaucrat trapped in the machine of colonial rule, unable to resist but at the same time unwilling to be able to do so , there must be effective leaders willing to bring about change, and the benefits of a dialogue between colonizer and colonized are insurmountable As Nicholas J. White writes, “it has been argued that [often the removal of] colonial political systems they were essentially characterized by "collaboration" with established local elites"[3]. As part of such a political system, the Magistrate is, theoretically, an ideal candidate to help bring about a decolonization process. However, at least from our introduction at the beginning of the novel, he is not an ideal candidate. His lack of power and disinterest in turning his life into anything more than a quiet existence in a provincial town suggests that he accepts colonial rule, and even if he were to verbalize a disapproval or aversion towards it, he does not have the conviction or aspiration to act. Over the course of the novel, the Magistrate's lack of aspiration becomes increasingly apparent, mixing with an apathetic view of the world. It is debatable whether the Magistrate is even horrified by colonial rule, the most obvious view being that he disagrees with the methods by which the Empire enforces its colonial rule and less so with whether it enforces it at all. The magistrate proves himself capable of compassion, as well as guilt for his involvement in the practices of colonial rule; he ensures that an orphaned boy taken prisoner is taken care of, and refers to one of Joll's first victims as "father", as a sign of respect within the provincial region he governs. [Coetzee, pp. 3] Also, his "pleading" to Joll regarding the fate oftwo prisoners shows both a level of compassion and guilt. Perhaps the most important evidence of the magistrate's compassion and guilt is his direct, personal and intimate care for an abandoned barbarian girl, a victim of Joll's torture. Left blind and paralyzed by Joll's torture, the girl represents a moral burden to the magistrate, proof to him that "the distance between me and her torturers […] is negligible", that she is truly part of the colonial ruling class. [Coetzee, pp. 29] Furthermore, she comes to symbolize for him the worst of colonial rule. As Abdullah F. Al-Badarneh observes in his essay 'Waiting for the Barbarians: The Identity of the Magistrate in a Colonial Context': 'For him […] she is a historical document of the injustice of colonization. This document contains evidence in the marks and traces of torture on her body, eyes and legs.'[4] The girl is both evidence that the only separation between the magistrate and Joll is the title and that colonial rule depends from the notion that "pain is truth". Feeling guilty for the colonel's treatment, the magistrate takes it upon himself to try to heal her badly damaged feet: "I begin to wash her. She raises her feet for me. I knead and massage her relaxed toes through the soft soap milky. Soon my eyes close, my head droops. It's a kind of rapture." [Coetzee, pp. 31] This sense of rapture to which the Magistrate succumbs is the manifestation of the liberation from the sense of guilt he feels towards the way in which the girl was treated by Joll. The nature of his relationship with the girl becomes more confusing as it progresses: 'I didn't get into her. From the beginning my desire did not take that direction, that directionality." [Coetzee, pp. 36] His 'desire' for her is not sexual, but rather he desires her as an alleviation of his guilt, a form of catharsis. Her body, and her care for it, becomes a vehicle of forgiveness, of a decolonized ideal: "I watch her undress, hoping to capture in her movements a hint of an old free state." [Coetzee, pp. 36]] Although the Magistrate's acts of kindness and compassion, his respect, his 'pleading' and his care for the girl could be seen as indicators that he ethically opposes the cruelty of the Empire, it could also be he argued that his acts are simply opposition to torture, or, perhaps on a more personal level, specific opposition to the methods of the despicable Joll. The magistrate's acceptance of colonialism can be seen in several cases. When the older of the two prisoners for whom he had pleaded dies, he attempts to extract the objective truth from the remaining prisoner, promising release from Joll's torture as a reward. Here he notes that "it was not lost on me that a questioner can wear two masks, speak with two voices, one harsh, the other seductive." [Coetzee, pp. 8] The Magistrate is the 'seductive' compared to the 'tough' Joll, two sides of the same coin. His compulsion towards the boy is further evidence, much like the paralyzed barbarian girl, that he is personally involved in colonialism. This duality he has with Joll comes to symbolize for the magistrate the cruelty of colonial rule, but also demonstrates to himself how involved he is in it: "I was the lie the Empire tells itself when times are easy, he was the truth that the Empire tells when strong winds blow. Two faces of imperial domination, no more, no less." [Coetzee, pp. 148] His presence as a sympathizer is as essential to colonial control as Joll's cruelty and finds little to criticize towards his duties, demonstrating an acceptance of his administrative positionMagistrato often plays the role of colonizer and sees in Joll also the role expected of the colonized. His relationship with the young woman, his sense of 'ecstasy' and liberation, is on the one hand caring, but on the other there are simultaneously aggressive and fetishistic elements. She is subtly hostile towards him, aware of her position of racial inferiority to him within the colonial discourse in which their relationship exists: "But also the movement with which she lifts her apron over her head and throws it aside it is convoluted, defensive, hindered." , as if he were afraid of hitting invisible obstacles. His face has the look of something that knows it's being watched.' [Coetzee, pp. 36] There is a claustrophobia in her posture, 'irritated, defensive, trapped', as if she is aware that she is some kind of prisoner of his own, a prisoner both politically and as a manifestation of his guilt. The magistrate orientalises her by making her the symbol and object of his colonial guilt, curiosity, referring to her with the pronoun 'herself'. Even the magistrate does not disdain to give in to the demonization of the barbarian prisoners for which he detests Joll: «So, all together, let us lose sympathy for them. The dirt, the smell, the noise of their arguing and coughing become too much." [Coetzee, pp. 21] His tone shows a crack in the sympathy it is supposed to symbolize, signifying that an element of Joll's cruelty exists within him too. Constantly dominant within the relationship, the Magistrate ends up summarizing Edward Said's idea regarding the constant superiority of the Oxidant over the Orient: «Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which places the Western in a whole series of possible relationships with the East without ever losing its relative advantage."[5] The magistrate, until his incarceration, constantly refers to the East of the barbarian girl and the prisoners as their superior, an indisputable cog in the colonial machine. For decolonization to be a possibility, there must be figures who vehemently oppose colonial rule. The Magistrate, de facto leader of the small province of the Empire he governs, shows a lack of power, a lack of aspiration towards decolonization, but also shows an acceptance of colonial rule. A colonizer himself, he repeatedly shows himself to be involved in colonial rule. When he shows sympathy or kindness towards the barbarians, it is primarily due to an opposition to Joll's cruelty, his means, and not his motives. Without colonialism the magistrate would be without social standing, financial support or influence. His livelihood and his ideal future of "quiet life" depend on the continuation of colonial rule and thus his sympathies become mere intellectual indulgences. His sympathy but lack of action is representative of the now often caricatured liberal: intellectually curious but reluctant to act. After his incarceration, however, the magistrate's sympathies begin to shift to moderate opposition to the Empire, largely due to his subjection to torture and humiliation and a deeper understanding of the treatment the colonized suffer under the colonial rule. With his altered feelings toward the Empire, his deprivation of title and power, and the unofficial withdrawal of Imperial forces from the border region formerly under his rule, the magistrate of the novel's conclusion proves more aware of the nuances of colonialism and the difficulty of decolonization. The Magistrate's account in the final chapter recognizes the problems that arise when idealized, and so far only theoretical, decolonization becomes reality. With the withdrawal,. 1871