《Present Tense Narration》.pdfVIP

Present Tense Narration, Mimesis, the Narrative Norm, and the Positioning of the Reader in Waiting for the Barbarians JAMES PHELAN The Simultaneous Present in Waiting for the Barbarians The elderly magistrate-protagonist of J. M. Coetzees Waiting for the Barbarians narrates a painful and remarkable tale, the story of his complicity with torturers as well as his own experience of being tortured; of his attempts to expiate the pain of one tortured woman, attempts that actually perpetuate her pain and oppres­ sion; of his humiliation by the forces of his Empire and his continued complicity with the Empire. He is a man who is self- reflective but not fully aware of what he is doing and why, who wants to have his heart in the right place but is very attached to the pleasures of the body. This character and these experiences would lend themselves very well to a retrospective first person narration in the manner of Great Expectations. The magistrate could occa­ sionally judge his former self from his perspective at the time of narration, and part of the narrative tension for the reader would be 2 2 2 Present Tense Narration the question of how the experiencing-I evolves into the narrating-I . Of course, Coetzee could still indicate that the narrator-Is under­ standing of himself and his situation is severely limited . Such a treatment of the narrative perspective would allow Coetzee, first, to use the magistrates retrospection to highlight some of the thematic import of the narrative, especially concerning complicity, and, second, to involve the reader in seeing beyond the magistrate, building upon or even revising the narrators conclusions. Coetzee, however, ha