Waiting for the Barbarians

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4 Summary

The Magistrate is promptly brought by the guards to his office where a man is sitting at his desk rummaging through the magistrate’s folders and records. The Magistrate realizes the man is a warrant officer of the Third Bureau. The Magistrate speaks to the man, and when the latter finally answers, he accuses the Magistrate of consorting with the enemy. The Magistrate responds by claiming that the settlement is at peace and that the nomadic attack that is apparently imminent is no cause for alarm. This does not persuade the officer, whose name we learn is Mandel. The Magistrate is subsequently imprisoned, but he initially sees this as something of a liberation from his allegiance to the empire which he has gained increasing contempt for since Colonel Joll’s initial visit.

The conditions of the Magistrate’s captivity are at first tolerable. He holds fast to the idea that he will get his say in a court, that law and order will prevail, and that he will be able to plead his innocence. After some time spent as a prisoner, he is once again brought to Mandel where he pleads his case and says that he was returning the girl as a peace offering. Mandel does not appear interested in the story. Instead, he levels accusations of treason against the Magistrate and returns him to captivity where he is treated like an animal. He is given only minimal food and spends much of his time starving and desperately wishing for food. He also is not allowed to clean himself, which he sees as a further humiliation in front of the townspeople, the very citizens whom he used to lead.

He finally is able to convince one of the warders to allow him a chance to clean himself and his clothing. He is escorted into the kitchen at the inn, where he knows there is a key. He deftly snatches it without being spotted, and later that night, he escapes his holding cell. He is unsure where his escape will lead, and as he contemplates his next steps, he realizes that he is likely being sought by the guard. He hides in a room of one of the sex workers he used to visit, under the bed. The woman and a man enter the room and copulate while the Magistrate lies under the bed. The Magistrate feels a heightening shame at this occurrence, and ultimately decides to return to his cell. This time however, he uses his escape to extort the guard, which enables him to negotiate for food and better conditions until Colonel Joll returns.

The Magistrate is brought before Joll in what was once his old office. Joll has discovered the scrolls that the Magistrate had been attempting to decipher as a hobby. When asked to translate the scripts, the Magistrate wryly makes it all up, and it effectively is a tirade against the brutality of the Empire. He further incriminates himself and is returned to his cell where he is stripped naked and is deprived of water and food for days. The chapter concludes with a brutal act of humiliation in which the Magistrate is dressed in a woman’s gown, taken to a makeshift gallows, and has his head placed in a noose, all in front of the citizens of the town. Eventually, he is removed from the noose but is hog-tied and hung up in front of the townsfolk. At last, the Magistrate screams and grunts and pleads to be released, which completes his humiliation and degradation.

Part 4 Analysis

If the Magistrate’s impulsive decision to ask the girl to remain with him was his own resignation from the Empire, when he returns to the settlement, his imprisonment confirms it officially. When the Magistrate is first escorted to his prison cell, the sense of liberation becomes real for him. He understands that he will be permanently disassociated from his position within the Empire. As he is heading toward the prison, the Magistrate says, “[t]here is a spring in my walk as I am marched away to confinement between my two guards” (77). He describes his mood as one of “elation” and he traces this to his new awareness, begun in the desert, as a “free man” (77). It is clear from the start of the novel that the Magistrate is no supporter of the cruelty imposed by the Empire on the local Indigenous people. However, because of the nature of his position within the Empire, he considered himself an accomplice in spite of his contempt for Joll and his methods. By becoming a captive of the Empire, the Magistrate has simultaneously freed himself from it while finding allegiance with the Indigenous prisoners who were tortured. Contempt is simply not enough; the imprisonment is what truly distinguishes the Magistrate from the empire he formerly represented.

At the beginning of his imprisonment, the Magistrate is confident almost to the point of arrogance. When notified that Third Bureau will be expanding the prison, the Magistrate snidely replies, “[A]h yes…time for the black flower of civilization to bloom” (78). Now that he is being imprisoned, he can openly criticize the Empire, something not afforded to him when he was the actual magistrate of the town. His growing self-assurance does not last long, however. As his imprisonment wears on, his captors erode it gradually by depriving him of basic essentials. He becomes more a prisoner of his own body and its fundamental needs, specifically hunger. This introduces the theme of The Needs of the Body Outweigh the Needs of the Mind. The Magistrate’s sense of ethical purpose, his sense of sacrifice for a larger cause, all of it is eviscerated with his public humiliation. Mandel and his staff first break the Magistrate’s sense of pride, then his will, and finally they break his spirit entirely when they hang him in woman’s clothes for the entire town to see. The virtue signaling that identified the Magistrate’s initial imprisonment ultimately was wiped away entirely. By the time he is publicly humiliated, his sense of virtue is entirely destroyed. Additionally, the treatment of the Magistrate signals a shift in the way the term barbarians is perceived in the text. The suffering endured by the Magistrate at the hands of Mandel and his men is the real savagery. Speaking of posterity and of those who will study history in subsequent generations, the Magistrate says that he wants to stand as proof “that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian” (104). He is not referring here to the Indigenous nomadic community; he is referring to the men of the Empire who commit atrocities such as torture.