Comparison Between Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians

In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Conrad demonstrates the desire the Europeans have to overtake Africa. This desire to take over a colony continues to be shown in the Waiting for the Barbarians. But unlike Heart of Darkness, J.M. Coetzee seems to realize and shows through the magistrate that it wrong to destroy the “enemy” for the “enemy” may be what is helping to keep the empire thriving. Cortez also shows the beginning of compassion toward the “barbarians.”

Through the characters I see a connection between Kurtz and Colonel Joll. Both are authority figures who choose to abuse the Africans and the “barbarians.” And both seem to fail in their desire for power and expansion of the empire. Kurtz leaves his fallen empire and says “The horror!” It is as though he may now realize how awful he treated the African natives. In this respect, he shares similar characteristics to the magistrate. Both feel a sense of guilt and terror to what they have caused and witnessed in the empires they were apart of destroying. After Kurtz has lost his power over the natives and is no longer in control of the empire he dies. Colonel Joll also ends up with a distressed empire. In the end of the novel Coetzee expresses a fear in the people. People begin to gossip about the harm the barbarians will cause such as rape and destruction. The people of the empire become frightened of what lies ahead. Colonel Joll definitely lost power and seems to have put it in the hands over the barbarians. The people under his empire make decisions on what they think the barbarians will do. They both also have someone who is challenging their authority; the magistrate and Marlow. The magistrate and Kurtz do not agree with their leaders decisions and are haunted by the brutality they have witnessed.

The magistrate seems to think that sometimes he is similar to Colonel Joll. They both are working to defeat the enemy and although the magistrate is not physically beating the barbarians he is apart of the cause and does not try to stop this abuse. Even though the magistrate does help the blind barbarian girl, he is unsuccessful because he in turn is punished. Despite the fact that the magistrate does not seem to agree with the treatment of the barbarians he still would chose to keep the job he holds because he thinks it would be better for the barbarians if he was in his position rather than someone else. This is similar to Marlow in Heart of Darkness. He is independent and becomes skeptical of the how the white men treat the Africans, making him skeptical of imperialism. (450)