Thinking Activity: Foe
Foe by J. M. Coetzee
Hello Friends, I am Nidhi Dave from department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my Thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here i discuss about the some questions answers from the novel Foe by J.M. Coetzee.
About the Novel:
Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolded as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
About the author:
John Maxwell Coetzee(born 9 February 1940) is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Prize (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates. Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002 and became an Australian citizen in 2006.He lives in Adelaide.
1, How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and Crusoe?
Ans,
“I would gladly now recount to you the history of the singular Cruso, as I heard it from his own lips. But the stories he told me were so various, and so hard to reconcile one with another… age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory, and he no longer knew for sure what was truth” (Coetzee, 11-12)
This quote from Coetzee’s Foe is the readers first introduction to any aspect of Cruso’s character in the book. The beginning of Foe is told from the first-person point of view of Susan Barton, and because of this, the reader is aware of Susan’s inner thoughts as she arrives on the island. When Susan first lands on the island she has her first encounter with Friday. Susan first refers to Friday as “the Negro”, but then just one page later she references, to the reader, that his name is Friday. Since Friday is mute, Susan cannot know of his name unless she had previous knowledge of who he is, or the author assumes the reader knows who Friday is. This is when I first begin viewing Foe as an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe.
While Friday retains the same name in Foe as in Robinson Crusoe, Robinson Crusoe’s name is changed to “Cruso” which marks the first in a series of differences between the character of Cruso(e) in Foe and Robinson Crusoe. Cruso’s lack of journaling is a stark contrast to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is much less passive and senile in regards to his own development on the island. Crusoe kept a painfully detailed account of every action he does on the island in a journal he updates daily. In this journal, Crusoe meticulously records every step for all of the tools he crafts, and he writes about his own progress with his newly acquitted relationship with religion. This Robinson Crusoe is much more in tune with his own reality and interested in his own accomplishments than Foe’s Cruso. This is also evident in the number of tools and objects that Robinson Crusoe makes in comparison to Cruso. Robinson Crusoe fills his multiple homes with various types of pots, tables, chairs, fences, and even a canoe. All of these items Crusoe builds are to improve and aide in his growth on the island, and he must be mentally sharp in order to build these items. Cruso in Foe has not put any effort towards building tools, as he only has a bed when Susan arrives at the island, and from the quote, it seems like he may not have the mental capacity to build these tools. Although Cruso does builds many terraces, he exclaims that they are for the future generations and not himself.
One explanation for the difference in mindset and mental stability in the two Robinson Crusoe’s may be that in Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe felt that his island life had more value than Cruso did. Before becoming stranded on the island, religion wasn’t a focus in Robinson Crusoe’s life, and he frequently sinned; such as when he disobeyed his father. After becoming stranded on the island, Crusoe began to read the bible and incorporate God into his daily thoughts and actions. Crusoe expressed deep regret for his sinful past, and often attributed hardships to a lesson from God. This newfound life style gave significant meaning to Crusoe’s daily actions as they represented growth in his faith, and a positive change in character. For Cruso, the island did not lead him to make any significant changes in his character or ideals. Therefore, his daily actions had less significance to him, and when his reality and sense of self began to slip away from him he was not concerned.
2, Friday’s characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe.
Ans, Defoe used Friday to explore themes of religion, slavery and subjugation, all of which were supposed to a natural state of being at that time in history, and Coetzee uses him to explore more strongly themes of slavery, black identity, and the voice of the oppressed. In neither book is Friday left simply to be a character, he is instead always used as a device through which the reader can explore other topics..
‘Your master says the slavers cut [your tongue] out; but I have never heard of such a practice… Is it the truth that your master cut it out himself and blamed the slavers?’
(Coetzee, J.M, ‘Foe’.)
The fact that this question is never answered, and that all attempts to force Friday to communicate fail drastically leave the reader wondering whether the slavers that captured Friday removed his tongue, or whether that was done by the colonialist Cruso, who felt there was ‘no need of a great stock of words’, (Coetzee, J.M, ‘Foe’). ‘In a little time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me… I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name: I likewise taught him to say Yes and No and to know the meaning of them’. Coetzee was asserting that it was not his right to give voice to an oppressed black character, and let Friday stand for the victims of apartheid and slavery, where Defoe (due to the beliefs of society at his time) believed that it was right and natural for Crusoe to claim the position of Master to Friday, and to speak for him. Friday in Foe’s work, in standing for the victims of apartheid and slavery, is a black African character ‘he was black, negro, with a head of fuzzy wool’ (Coetzee’s Foe), whereas Crusoe’s Friday, not standing for those causes, is portrayed as being an anglicised version of a Caribbean man, who ‘had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance’. The representation of Friday in these two texts is vastly different, and one could hardly believe that the two were in fact the same character. With different histories, and different personalities, in fact all both have in common is playing the role of the non-white slave in the text, to serve a literary purpose, in both reflecting the views of wider society towards non-white people, and in showing the development of other characters.
3, Is Susan reflecting the white mentality of Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe)?
Ans, Susan Barton, the narrator in Foe, finds herself shipwrecked on a desolate island with a man named Robinson Cruso. It does not take long for Barton to recognize her status on the island after she tells Cruso her story of being washed ashore. She says, “I presented myself to Cruso, in the days when he still ruled over the island, and became his second subject, the first being his manservant Friday” (Coetzee 11). Throughout the novel, even long after Cruso’s death, she describes the island as “Cruso’s island.”
The tone of the novel feels consistently, though ambiguously, ironic. There are various elements that contribute to this subtle facetiousness; one of them is Susan Barton’s chipper and self-assured storytelling. She is the unexpected, female revisionist of a classic male tale. She is a character who has been edited out of the iconic novel. Her story, which has been silence and repressed, casts a whole new light on Robinson Crusoe’s adventures, bringing in the traumas and brutalities of colonialism. With Susan’s revision of Robinson Crusoe, we are forced to consider the realism of Robinson Crusoe, the violent realities upon which the fantasy lies. The slave’s story is perennially repressed. But through Susan, a female version is coming to light. The irony of this version is in Susan’s flippant tone in respect to her own story. Her attitude toward her own trauma is entirely casual. It is no thing to have survived what she has survived. Until the end of the novel, her intention has not been to illuminate a repressed version of events; rather, it has arguably been as sensationalist as Foe’s. Until the final chapters, her plan has been to sell an exceptional tale.
Although Susan Barton is the voice of the novel, she is not the main character because she is most concerned with telling the story of “Cruso’s island.” J.M. Coetzee is a male author who uses the voice of Barton to convey a deeper understanding of Defoe’s male character, Robinson Crusoe. As a woman, she is used as an instrument to further define the characters and story of Robinson Crusoe. The beginning of the novel is focused on Cruso and his island, while the end of the novel is focused on Barton defining her relationship with Cruso and also her relationship with Friday. Through her meek subservience and her role as the supporting actress to the ever-present figure of Robinson Cruso, Susan Barton’s voice is lost. Coetzee uses her as merely a device to relay the stories of Cruso and Friday.
Thank you
Words: 1,737
.png)
.png)
