Thinking Activity:Foe by J.M.Coetzee

Foe by J.M.Coetzee

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. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Q. 1 – How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and 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 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.

👉 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. 

Q.2 Friday’s characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe.

👉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 

Q. 3 Is Susan reflecting the white mentality of Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe)?

👉In Coetzee`s version, ''Robinson Crusoe'' becomes the story of ''a castaway and a dumb slave and now a madwoman.'' The ''madwoman'' is Susan Barton.

👉J.M. Coetzee presents Barton as a submissive supporting actress to the extremely dominant character of Robinson Crusoe.

👉Barton’s role as a submissive supporting character to Cruso displays Coetzee’s formulation of Susan as a man’s woman. 

👉Susan is a sensual woman, and as the only female character in both Defoe’s novel as well as Coetzee’s novel, she is represented through her sexuality. Susan’s sexuality is first displayed in the beginning of the novel, when she is on the island and Cruso is alive. As she falls asleep one night, Cruso begins to make advances toward her. She describes the event by saying, 

“I pushed his hand away and made to rise, but he held me. No doubt I might have freed myself, for I was stronger than he” (30)

👉The presence of a female main character, Susan Barton, in Coetzee’s Foe critiques Defoe’s original imagination of Robinson Crusoe by showing the marginalized role of women in the seventeenth century. Susan is very much a man’s woman, a sensual woman represented through her sexuality. In his portrayal of Susan, Defoe is critiquing the traditional male attitude towards women.

Q. 4 Traces of white mentality in all the characters. (Master-slave, savage-Christian (white - civilized), giver – taker, shifting of power position – One is always ready to take place of Master)

Q.5 Which novel is convincing and has poetic justice? (or is there poetic justice? – Has writer achieved what it wished for? – Has Friday got the justice? )

Q. 6 Who is Protagonist? (Foe – Susan – Friday – Unnamed narrator)

👉Susan is the protagonist of the story. She is a British woman who went searching for her lost daughter. After searching for two years, she gives up and tries to return to England, only to be caught in the middle of a mutiny and marooned by the crew of the ship she riding home.

👉 The novel begins with her account of becoming a castaway and arriving on Cruso's island. Throughout the novel, Susan is obsessed with the idea of telling her story and the power of words. Although she lacks the talent to write, she is convinced that her story will find her fame. 

👉Despite her aging and impoverishment throughout the novel, she relentlessly pushes Foe to write an account of her time on the island. The nature of her character is ambiguous as although she appears good in some parts (e.g., her well-meaning attempt to send Friday back to "Africa" is an example of this), other aspects of her character (e.g., her anger that Friday won't do as she says, or her possible attempt of harm on the girl claiming to be "Susan," her daughter), suggest a less well-natured character.

👉 She can be seen throughout the novel attempting to control the narrative, in particular in the third section when she becomes Foe's lover (or as she sees it, his "Muse") in an attempt to inspire him to write the story in the way she wishes. In the last few sections, she appears to lose her mind as her speeches become longer and more erratic and she convinces herself that Foe and the others in the room are not real.