Since I will be doing a presentation on Foe this week and the use of silence (mainly with the character of Friday), I wanted to talk about it in a post. My favorite article I came across was Mike Marais’s “Disarming Silence.” In this article, Marais starts by stating the two opposing views of Coetzee’s use of silence in the novel. Silence can be seen as either an “ancient language of defeat” (as Rushdie refers to it in Shame) or something that enables and empowers the other. Both arguments are compelling are equally arguable. One could argue that Friday didn’t choose to have his tongue cut out and therefore he was forced to silence. However, I side with Marais and the idea that silence is empowering and asserts Friday’s freedom. I say this because, although Friday didn’t choose to have his tongue cut out (if that is what really happened), he does choose to not speak or participate in Susan Barton’s attempts to get him to tell his story. Yes, one can suggest he simply doesn’t understand and can not participate in Barton’s attempts to get him to “speak.” However, there is just as much evidence suggesting otherwise. I will give examples of two scenes to keep this post from running on too long.
First I’d like to look at the scene where Barton tries to teach Friday language and get him to tell his story. It also a scene Marais analyzes in his essay.
“I reached out and took him by the chin and turned his face toward me. His eyelids opened.
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of those black pupils was there a spark of mockery?
I could not see it. But if it were there, would it not be an African spark, dark to my English
eye” (147).
Here Barton questions whether Friday is too clueless learn or if he is just playing dumb. It is also after this encounter, as Marais points out, that Susan exclaims “Mr. Foe I must have my freedom!” (147). Here, Barton’s interaction with Friday and his ‘refusal’ to speak seems to challenge her freedom, and not his.
Another example comes from an earlier scene, when Barton comments on how her silence symbolizes power (because she chooses what to say and what to keep silent) while Friday’s silence symbolizes powerlessness because “no matter what he is to himself…what he is to the world is what I make of him (122). Except he isn’t what she makes of him. He seems to have control over her. Barton’s says it easy for her to make up Friday’s story and pass it as fact, but yet she is unable to do so. She is obsessed with Friday’s silence and continual yearns to have him tell his story. Through their relationship and Barton’s obsession to have Friday tell his story portray Friday as the one in control of the situation.
I hope you find this as interesting as I did and, as always, I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on the matter J
Hi Alice,
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see how silence is empowering for Friday, especially because many times, as you mentioned, he chooses to opt himself out of situations where other characters want to include him. At one point, for example, Barton thinks to have finally found the one way of communicating and connecting with Friday through music, but she was sadly mistaken. Disheartened, Barton realizes: “He seemed to feel my touch no more than if it had been a fly’s; from which I concluded that there was a trance of possession, and his soul more in Africa than in Newington. Tears came to my eyes…” (98). Barton was devastated not only at the fact that she would never be able to communicate with Friday, but also because Friday had no clue at her attempts to build their relationship. In this instance we can say that language “is empowering and asserts Friday’s freedom” because it allows him to keep the only thing he has left for himself, his own narrative and side of the story.
To some extent, however, I also believe that this silence allows Barton to narrate his story to her own liking, while reinforcing the master/ slave/servant narrative and taking away Friday’s identity and shaping it to whatever fits her story best. I am a bit more on this side of the boat. Friday’s character is framed and constructed by Barton, since he is not allowed the voice or space to speak his own. Friday has so little control of his own character that Barton speaks of him as if she owned him. In reflection to Friday’s character, Barton states, “No matter what he is to himself (is he anything to himself?- how can he tell us?), what he is to the world is what I make of him…He…is a child unborn, a child waiting to be born that cannot be born” (122). Barton, thus, assumes the role of the mother, only in the sense of being Friday’s “literary creator” and “manipulator” of his wants, needs and desires. Once again, we can never assert that Friday is mute and can fend for himself. As far as we know, this is his state of being, as implied from the single-sided narrative we are provided.
All in all, both positions can easily be argued depending from what narrative the reader wants to look at it from. Thank you for sharing. I look forward to your presentation.
Norma Perez
Alice,
ReplyDeleteYour discussion of silence as empowerment reminds me of the Trinh Minh-ha article "Not You/Like You", in which she asserts the idea that silence is "a will not to say or a will to unsay". She points out the fact that ‘silence’ is often viewed as the opposite of ‘speech’, but that’s the extent to which its exploration has gone- it hasn’t been explored “as a language of its own” much. Can we say that this is exactly what the Mike Marais article does then?
The opposing view that you discuss- the idea that silence is “an ancient language of defeat”- operates under the premise that language is verbal/auditory only. It doesn’t take into account other forms of language. Friday might be tongueless and, therefore, physically incapable of oral language, but he definitely has the option of communicating in other ways, yet he doesn’t. This is what tells me that his silence is a choice and not the lack of choice, and that this choice is indeed an empowering form of resistance.
Your blog entry definitely offers much to think about in terms of the role of silence. Like you and Marais, I strongly feel that silence “is empowering and asserts Friday’s freedom”. I believe this to be a strong theme throughout Coetzee’s novels and characters that choose silence as with Michael K, and the “barbarian girl” in Waiting for the Barbarians. This whole conversation of silence infused another idea for me as well. I feel that Coetzee’s image of leafs and pages of a book throughout Foe signifies how we, as human beings, find silence troubling and are tempted to assert our own interpretations of reality onto those empty pages of silences. This may be the reason for the multiple endings of Foe. It is up to us as the reader to write our own interpretations but only after seeing an array of possibilities for them. We tend to quickly make assumptions based on our limited means without looking at the whole picture. We do not take the time to look at all of the possibilities outside our own realm of experience and prejudice. This follows so closely to the colonialists imposing their will on native countries.
ReplyDeleteIs Friday’s tongue really cut out? This is something that we are not sure of from the beginning of the novel. But Susan feels determined to prove that Friday does not have a tongue. Friday could very well have his tongue and is only exercising his right to silence. Silence can be just as powerful as speech. But does Friday have a story to tell? I agree with you, I think he does have a story to tell but his silence is just as empowering as speaking. His choice not to communicate is his way of having some control over his life and who he is. The fact that he remains quiet drives Susan to the point of obsession and she is convinced that there is a story here somewhere. In this novel I think the story is Friday’s not Susan’s. Friday is the quieted narrator and has been throughout the whole novel. His decision to silence himself only makes his history that much more enticing. Oppression through silence reminds me of Michael K.
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