Dreams in the Novel Waiting For The Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

Abstract

The paper starts from the specific position and complexity of the dream within fiction. As part of the literary work, a dream retains its psychological meanings, since it is mainly related to the psychological profiling of a certain literary character. Still, at the same time it is incorporated into the composition and it has its function in the text. Firstly, in this paper is examined the position of dreams in the fabric of the novel, that is, what is analysed is their textuality. It is established that dreams appear periodically in the novel, with intervals that are not regular enough for one to be able to speak of an unquestionable authorial intention, but still, appearing according to a certain pattern that cannot be attributed to chance. The relatively large number of dreams and the gradual change in the amount of text that comes between them, as well as the noticeable break in the appearance of dreams in the middle of the novel, already speaks of their importance. This is finally confirmed when looking at the content–the motives appearing in them. Namely, it turns out that dreams repeat and vary a certain range of motifs, thus making them the leitmotif of the entire novel. One could even speak of a dream that repeats itself, with significant shifts occurring within it. Further analysis, i.e. placing dreams in a narrative context, leads to an insight into the connection between these shifts and psychological changes in the protagonist of the novel, named as the magistrate, who is also a dreamer. However, the special and additional value of dreams in the novel Waiting for the Barbarians becomes clearer when the thematic and linguistic analysis of the text are added to these findings. Since the reception of Coetzee’s work so far is mainly concerned with the examination of how certain theses of contemporary philosophy and theory are initiated in the text of the novel, we focused more on the underemphasized importance of linguistic analyses that indicate the specific use of the Present Continuous verb tense by Coetzee. Namely, these insights become a shortcut to the relation of this novel to its own temporality, and thus bring us back to the philosophical problems directly thematized in the novel but embedded in the very technique of writing and building the composition. A dream offers a lot of material for interpretation, but at the moment of dreaming, any interpretation is blocked. A retold dream in the present tense is an obvious paradox. Bearing all this in mind, it is shown that dreams, on the one hand, strengthen, while on the other hand, they undermine the compositional structure of the novel. Dreams not only summarize and anticipate all the important themes and motifs of the work but also represent gaps in the narrative and reader’s time flow that can help us understand the process of Coetzee’s writing. It is shown that they reveal the integration of certain theoretical positions invoked by various allusions into the deeper mechanisms of the novel.