Hey guys! I hope the weekend found you all well. As mentioned before I am currently taking an African Literature course and this week the class read a book titled Foe by J.M. Coetzee. The book is a rewrite of another book titled Robinson Crusoe and this rewrite has some pretty significant changes. For one, in Foe an entirely new character enters the picture by the name of Susan Barton. It is through her eyes that the story of Cruso and Friday are told. This new narrative layer significantly changes the story as one knew it. Although the book is very different one finds themselves adapting to the plot as the book progresses and then one gets to the last chapter and the whole of the book gets flipped on its hope. My hope is that through this post one will gain a better understanding of the ending.
For those of you who have not read Foe allow me to give you a brief synopsis. Foe takes place as Susan Barton is kicked off of a boat heading to Brazil and struggles to reach an island that Cruso and Friday so happen to reside in. She is stranded in that island with Cruso and Friday for a little over year until a boat finally finds them and she then goes back to England. During that trip Cruso dies and so she is left only with Friday whom she “takes care of” during their time in England. Susan wants her story told so she goes to the author Foe to do so. During this time, she lives in absolute poverty and does not get much help from Foe in terms of sustenance. She decides to go on a journey to send Friday back to Africa and in that journey she ends up finding Foe who went into hiding as he owed money to the government. Although, they fight about the plot of the story things appear to be changing for the better for Susan. However, then the ending sends you to this very abstract world and the whole of the plot is brought into question.
In the last chapter, it appears a new character is brought into the picture. He is scanning a house and in the staircase landing he sees what appears to be a woman’s body. As he climbs the staircase he finds Friday and a woman lying next to him. He walks downstairs and sees a plaque in Foe’s honor which gives one the impression that it is Foe’s house. On a table he finds a manuscript. The manuscript appears to be a retelling of Susan’s story. However, this story is different it seems to be told by another person outside of the story. In it this narrator sees a shipwrecked ship he enters it and sees Susan Barton and her dead captain. However, the narrator finds Friday and opens Friday’s mouth. Friday appears to have let a noise out that goes throughout the boat. It looks like this narrator is going to try to release Friday from his slave status and give him a voice as well so the story continues. However, this brings the question is this a retelling of Susan’s story or is it a continuance of her story?
This ending is mind boggling as the introduction of this manuscript shatters Susan’s story and makes one think so what really happened was Susan’s story false or was this ending false. In addition, who is this new character who appears to be fully aware of who everyone is as demonstrated when coming into this mysterious household as he addresses the body of Friday by its rightful name, “ Kneeling, groping, I find the man Friday stretched at full length on his back” (154). It is important to note though that although he knows that the body belongs to Friday it appears he only knows this by someone giving him Friday’s description not because he has met Friday. This idea that he knows the characters in this household by someone else’s description is further seen when he is describing Friday breathing, “Then, if I can ignore the beating of my own heart, I begin to hear the faintest faraway roar: as she said, the roar of waves in a seashell; and over that, as if once or twice a violin-string were touched, the whine of the wind and the cry of a bird” (154). Who is this person and why is he entering what appears to be Foe’s house? Is he the narrator of that new manuscript? Did he read Susan’s manuscript and then did the narrative just shift to his retelling?
However, what is most important is not who this person is but what he does which is introducing the manuscript that retells the story of Foe which is already retelling the story known as Robin Crusoe. This only furthers the message that I think Coetzee is trying to exemplify which is the many ways a story can be told. Each story somewhat achieving a new perspective and information to what really happened but each giving very different perspectives.
This ending brings about many questions. It introduces new characters and does not explain them, a new way of retelling a story and no explanation to why it is so different, and it also exemplifies what a mysterious character Friday is. I do not think this ending really goes hand in hand with Foe that seemed to be resolving all the questions that were brought about in the beginning of the novel, but it is most definitely an interesting way to end it.
Jackie,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some very interesting points regarding the ending of the novel. At one point you even say, "It looks like this narrator is going to try to release Friday from his slave status and give him a voice as well so the story continues". While the other characters seem to be trying to give Friday a voice, really by imposing their own on him (or there own understandings of what a voice is on him), I believe this narrator understands that he cannot "give" Friday a voice. Instead I think he is desperately trying to bring himself down to his level and hear what already exists (the voice that is already present though perhaps not in a traditional understanding). Also, it is interesting that in the end only the sounds of the island come out of Friday's mouth and there is no "traditional" voice or retelling of the story in his own perspective. Perhaps, Coetzee is reiterating that the colonists/white man cannot and should not have the right to voice what is foreign to them. What is perhaps problematic and extremely interesting about this is that Coetzee, a white man, feels as if he can relay the story of a white woman (that her gender is not a big enough divide to seperate her voice from his own understanding of what that would be).
I like how you point out that this final chapter is a retelling of the rest of the novel which is a retelling of Robinson Crusoe. Using this and the repetition of lines throughout the novel, Coetzee seems to be suggesting that everything is just a copy of everything else. Also, the layers of a story within a story parallel the multiple layers of narrators within the book. As you say, "Coetzee is trying to exemplify...the many ways a story can be told." If the dead woman really is Susan Barton, then this chapter is the only time we really get to "see" her from another character's POV. Since she is portrayed as an obstacle to understanding Friday, we can no longer identify with her character as we have been throughout the novel. I agree that the narrator is ambiguous, but the more I think about it the more I believe that it's supposed to be us, the reader.
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