FOE
BY J.M.COETZEE (Nobel Prize winner for Literature)
(Raja sir’s views)
In his novel ‘Foe’, J.M.Coetzee has reconsidered the events of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ from a new point of view. Almost everybody in the field of Literature is acquainted with the hardships which Robinson Crusoe had to bear in his adventurous journeys. Crusoe had spent 28 years, 2 months and 19 days on the island. In Crusoe’s story, the author, Daniel Defoe, presents his hero who lives in a man’s world. Women appear as minor characters, for short durations. It is clear in the story that Robinson Crusoe goes well without women for all those years. However, in the end he marries. Finally he goes back to the island and from there to Brazil. In all respects, it appears that Crusoe has to face the severities for all those years.
J.M.Coetzee, in his story, ‘Foe” makes up for these severities, and the writer presents a woman’s story. The story moves as she demands. Susan is the daughter of and English mother and a French father. She has a daughter of the same name. The daughter is abducted by an Englishman and she is conveyed to the New World. Susan follows her to Brazil, but after that at a place called Bahia she loses her. Susan decides to stay there, and she spends two years there. Finally, she boards a ship to Lisbon and falls in love with the captain of the ship. To her misfortune, the sailors mutiny and kill the captain. Susan takes refuge in a small boat. She lands on an island. Friday finds her and brings her to his master named Cruso, an irascible, lazy, imperious fellow. He has no interest in going back to the mainland. He doesn’t even like to recall the events of his early life there. Friday can’t speak because his tongue has been cut out, either by Cruso, or by the slave owners. Three of them spend one year on the Island. They are rescued by an English ship under the command of Captain Smith. On the voyage back to England, Cruso dies, crying for the island. The rest of the book is about Susan and Friday in England, and how she attempts to persuade Daniel For to turn her account of life on the island into a popular and interesting book of adventure. Foe is not much interested in Cruso and Friday. He calls their island a monotonous and boring place. But he is interested in those two years which Susan had spent in Bahia. Foe is financially not strong and can’t publish the book because he is in debt. His house has been taken by the bailiffs. Meanwhile, Susan tries to write the story as “The Female Castaway”, but she lacks Foe’s fanciful style of writing. One day, suddenly, her daughter turns up. She is perhaps not the daughter but a new road onward.
Unlike Mr. Coetzee’s earlier novels, the tone in the novel “Foe” is different. To bring an old story, about 250 years old, to life again, or rather continue the story is definitely a challenging task. Susan’s story is not disgraced by comparison with Defoe’s style. However, lucidity and verse are not as effective as in Defoe’s story. Susan’s story lacks the dramatic imagination of Defoe.
Mr. Coetzee’s novels culminate in “Foe”. They have a suggestion of parable about them. Sometimes they imagine further forms of man’s inhumanity to man like in “ Waiting for the Barbarians” and sometimes we are allowed to interpret them more specifically, their moral brought nearer home.
In his novel, Foe is presented as a guide and a teacher to Susan and Friday. He wants to teach Friday to write. He says,” Writing is not doomed to be the shadow of speech”. He tells Susan,” Speech is but a means through which the word may be uttered”.
It can be said that “Foe” is a whole world in itself, and it guides the reader along the passages of time which are not limited to years and decades but extend up to centuries. It is a book which gives delight to the reader, thought to the scholar and entertainment to the laymen. Mr. Coetzee’s “Foe”, like his any other novel, is really worth reading.
Raja Sir
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