There is a saying, "you don't know what you got until it's gone." Even the Folk/Rock legend, Joni Mitchell, sang about this in her song "Big Yellow Taxi." In J. M. Coetzee's Foe, this phrase sums up how Susan Barton thinks Friday feels now and her time spent on the island where she was marooned. Through Susan's process of storytelling, Coetzee is showing how the oppressors are giving a voice to the oppressed. Her story is one of discovering the truth behind Friday's cut off tongue in relation to the importance of communication. What she comes to find is that she has not escaped the island because she has found many other island-like formations in the city causing her frustration and Friday's sullenness. Like the song, she longs to be back on the island she has shared with Cruso where Friday can be safe and content.
From the very beginning, Susan did not want to be on the island. She could not understand how Cruso and Friday were happy and content living on the island without material supplies and without verbal speech. Cruso told her, "You think I mock Providence. But perhaps it is the doing of Providence that Friday finds himself on an island under a lenient master, rather than in Brazil, under the planter's lash" (23-24). The slavers on the mainland cut out Friday's tongue. Even though Friday does not have a tongue, he can still communicate with Cruso with simple words and hand gestures. Plus, in a sense, Friday is free on the island. He does not have to worry about being treated differently or sold into slavery in the middle of the ocean. Despite what Cruso says, while on the island, Susan still believes the mainland is much better than the island because Friday will have the luxury of modern conveniences and people to help him. In reality, Cruso and Friday already have everything they need on the island to live a fulfilling life. Cruso has asked Susan to remember, "not every man who bears the mark of a castaway is a castaway at heart" (33). He has made a home for himself and Friday. Cruso is not surviving; he is living and he does not need anybody to read his story.
Susan is learning and trying to express in her story the year spent on the island because she wants Cruso, Friday, the island, and herself all to be remembered. As she is trying to write her story, Susan discovers that her story is a series of mysteries. The truth lies with Cruso, who has passed away, and with Friday, who cannot speak. Susan wants answers to her questions about Friday's past. Through the process of writing her story, she is realizing that Friday is human, not a savage and should not be sold into slavery. In a civilized world, Friday is an island in his own body. Although he communicates in other ways, such as music, Friday cannot talk or fully communicate in speech. Without a form of verbal communication, Friday is alone in a world full of people. Friday dances "to remove himself, or his spirit, from Newington and England" (104). Friday is dancing to get away. He is transported back to his home on the island, back to where he is comfortable. His dancing is an island itself.
In reality, Susan does not literally want to be back on the island she has shared with Cruso. She wants to be in a peaceful place where she can find the answers to her questions. Like Cruso did on the island, Susan is only trying to live her life in the city. But, unlike Cruso, her life cannot start until her story is written. In the song, Joni Mitchell said, "they took all the trees and put them in a tree museum." By taking Friday off the island and returning to civilization, Susan has learned that Friday does not belong in the city. People will take advantage of him and sell him into slavery for money because he cannot speak. Slavery is Friday's prison or "museum" in the civilized land. Susan is able to see how Friday can never be free. In order to continue her story, Friday needs to speak. Foe has said, "Friday has no speech, but he has fingers, and those fingers shall be his means" (143). Friday's freedom in the civilized world will come with his written words about the island. Coetzee is showing how the oppressed do not have their own voice. It will take a long time until the victim's voice can truly be heard. Through Susan's storytelling, outsiders get to hear what the civilized people think of how the oppressed feel. When it comes down to it, sometimes the oppressors are wrong. The truth can only come from the oppressed.
I found your discussion of the various types of "islands" in the novel to be really resonant. It got me thinking about the political and personal connotations of islands, as well as the relationship between psychic and geographic islands, and the histories and social relations that inform their constructions and affects.
ReplyDeleteWhere I'm not sure I totally agree with you is what I think is your characterization of the island as fairly benign and the place where Friday is comfortable and "at home" (or perhaps this isn't you, but you representing Susan's ideas?). We only have Susan's word about this, and it seems that Susan can't think beyond her colonialist/racist stereotypes. After all, look at the picture she draws of "Africa" (a continent she has never visited) when she is trying to "teach" Friday language: "a row of palm trees with a lion roaming among them"! So it seems to me that her assumptions about Friday's relationship to the island and to "Africa" are nothing more than her romantic colonial fantasies. But I supposed the last section of the novel could be used to back up your reading of the island. And that's why I have so many problems with that section of the novel!
From Rolando-
ReplyDeleteVery interesting take on Friday; next to Susan’s supposed daughter, Friday was one of my favorite characters to read about. Your take on Friday was very interesting; how he is trapped in his own island in the form of his own self. What that suggests is that if he is his own island, is it up to us to “liberate” or possibly “rescue” him? What this discussion turns into is about the role of the colonizer- are the colonized “trapped” themselves? If they are, is it up to the colonizer to free them from what bounds them? Friday’s ideological constraints are constructed by language. According to Susan, she must free Friday through education. How and when is it possible to discern that Friday, the colonized, should be feed? I don’t know. When you discuss Susan, we then see that she is not free herself since she cannot effectively communicate her ideas. What does it say about the colonizer when it comes to freeing the colonized if they are trapped themselves? Interesting.
Do you feel that Susan’s story will be effective enough to represent everyone and her own story authentically enough since she is not the oppressed? When you really think about it, and look at the discourse involving truth and what books are in regards to truth, who can?