The Problems of Morality and Justice in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

Abstract

In its explorations of Waiting for the Barbarians, this paper examines the novel’s preoccupations with problems of morality and justice. To this end, this study employs Jacques Derrida’s view of justice and Friedrich Nietzsche’s perception of morality as a framework for understanding the portrayal of the problems of these concepts. This present paper also seeks to illustrate how the pursuit of justice and morality is futile and impossible in the novel. It also probes the extent to which the Magistrate is an accomplice in the wrongdoing of the Empire although he embarks upon a quixotic quest to restore a sense of justice and morality. This study throws light on how the Magistrate gets embroiled in a double bind between his position as a responsible official in the service of the Empire and his fervor for doing what is morally right.