Thinking activity: Foe - J M Coetzee
Hello readers,
Here I'm going to write a blog in response to some questions of the Foe by J M Coetzee. So, let's start…
First let's have a look at the summary of the text…
Foe - 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.
At the opening of Foe, Susan Barton washes up on the shore of a small rocky island, somewhere in the South Seas, sometime in the early eighteenth century. She is found by Friday, a black man with bare feet. Friday brings her to Cruso, a weather-beaten white man with a peaked straw hat. Susan remarks on the race of both men. Because he’s white, she considers Cruso to be Friday’s master. Friday doesn’t speak. Susan tells Cruso her story: she was born of an English mother and a French father. She has a daughter was abducted by an Englishman and taken to the New World. Susan followed her to Bahia in Brazil. She hunted for her high and low, but couldn’t find her. She stayed in Bahia for two years, until she finally caught a ship to Lisbon. She reveals to the reader, but not to Cruso, that she was the the captain's lover. But during the voyage, the sailors mutinied and killed the captain. They set Susan adrift in a small boat. This is how she landed on the island with Cruso.
Cruso is stubborn and irrational. He has no idea how long he’s been on the island because he’s kept no record. It could be months; it could be decades. He has also lost track of everything that happened to him and Friday before being on the island. Susan is appalled that he has never tried to keep any record. He mixes up all his stories. She has no idea what’s true or not. He reveals however that Friday doesn’t speak because he has no tongue. He gets Friday to open his mouth and show Susan. His tongue was cut out either by slavers or by Cruso himself. Cruso blames the slavers. Susan doesn’t know how to look at Friday after learning this. She gets nervous around him.
Susan spends a year on the island with Cruso and Friday. She sleeps with Cruso once. He falls into bouts of fever. He spends his days leveling useless terraces all over the island. There is nothing to plant on the terraces and they have no purpose, but he labors over them as though they are the greatest necessity. Friday catches fish. They don’t go hungry. They live in a small shack. The winds get terrible.
Finally, an English ship comes by and they are rescued – or at least, Susan is rescued. Cruso is experiencing a fever at the time and is carried on board against his will. Friday tries to run and hide, but Susan insists that they must get him; she believes it’s the humanitarian thing to do. They travel back to England but en route Cruso dies and Friday becomes Susan’s charge.
She brings Friday back to London and they find Foe. He has been too busy to write her book; but mostly he wants to know about what happened to her in Bahia. She and Foe argue over what the real story is. Foe feeds her and Friday and they debate the true story. She believes that the story that needs to be told is on the island and it has to do with Friday. It has to do with his tongue. The story that Friday isn’t able to tell is the story they must tell. Foe resists this, and pushes Susan to tell her scandalous affairs. She refuses. She tells him about Friday’s castration. They discuss how Friday thinks. Foe wants to teach Friday to write. He gives him a slate and Friday draws o’s all over it. Friday sleeps in the alcove of Foe’s room and Susan gets in Foe’s bed. They sleep together. His motion reminds her too much of Cruso, so she gets on top of him, frightening him at first. Then she tells him to think of her as his Muse. They lie in bed talking about Friday.
A dream-like sequence ensues in which Susan returns to the beginning of the story, where she swims toward the island. Buts instead of going ashore, she goes under the water to a wreck of a ship. She finds Friday chained up, sinking into the sand. She meditates on his body being his story. His voice is like the water that moves through his body, out his mouth, reaching every shoreline.
Let's have a look at the questions…
How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and Crusoe?
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. But 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.This Robinson Crusoe is much more in tune with his own reality and interested in his own accomplishments than Foe’s Cruso.
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. Also Robinson Crusoe felt that this island is not at all good for forever , and the other character Cruso felt that this island is a very good place and he wants to live forever here.
Friday’s characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe.
Daniel 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.
Also 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.
Who is Protagonist? (Foe – Susan – Friday – Unnamed narrator)
Susan, 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 is riding home.
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. She can be seen throughout the novel attempting to control the narrative, in particular in the third section when she becomes Foe's lover 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.
Thank you...
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