Anxiety In J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians

The Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee is a geek in South African literature. His worksfocus on the thinking of human being’s problem. The human being’s living condition andanxiety in predicament are the main issues in his novels.Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians was created in a transitional period. In this period,the power of government turns from the whites to the blacks in South Africa. The blacks facethe living threat under the rule of the whites, and Coetzee sympathizes the blacks’ sufferingsas a humanist. On the contrary, the whites’ living condition becomes severe under the rule ofthe blacks. Coetzee also worries about this as a white. As a writer, Coetzee projects hisanxiety in his works naturally. This thesis aims to probe anxiety in Waiting for the Barbarians.The thesis, based on close reading, combining social background and life experience ofCoetzee, is intended to explore the characters’ anxiety. Firstly, the thesis analyzes the blacks’panic and loneliness from the perspective of the blacks’ physical harm and identity crisis.Then, the present thesis analyzes the whites’ fear and dilemma. Last but not the least, thethesis analyze the strategies used to cope with anxiety by the blacks and the whites.In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee truly shows the blacks and the whites’ anxiety inthe predicament, and reflects his concern on human being’s problem. He aims to tell thereaders who should not wait in predicament, but try to look for the salvation. The right way tobe free from anxiety is bravely facing it, and this is the attitude of life that Coetzee, as ahumanist, advocates.