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

Character Analysis

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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3 Summary

The Magistrate opens this chapter with a discussion of the passing of winter into spring and all the signs that point to spring’s arrival. He sets out to compose two letters. The first is a notice that he is leaving the settlement to seek out the nomads and try to make a peace offering with them as a result of what he deems was severe damage to the mutual relationship caused by Joll’s unit. The second document gives him trouble; he does not know what to write, but presumably it is to be a reflection on his relationship with the girl. He gives up on this task and enlists a couple of men to help guide him across the harsh landscape in search of the Indigenous nomadic community. He also brings along the girl, much to the surprise of the three men whose help he has enlisted. He tells them that she will serve as an interpreter, but they are suspicious of this explanation because they see the girl as the Magistrate’s personal concubine. The Magistrate tells only the girl that the purpose of the expedition is to return her to her people.

The journey is a difficult one. The weather changes and becomes snowier, windier, and colder. The landscape and terrain are harsh and desolate. The men become sick. At one point, one of the men is nearly killed when he steps through an icy crust over a dried-up salt bed at the edge of a big lake. The same fate befalls one of the horses, and it is killed. Eventually, they become extremely thirsty and have to dig a makeshift well to access potable water.

They make slow progress, with the intentions of arriving at the mountains where the Magistrate knows they will run into the Indigenous community. During the journey, the men become friendly with the girl, who is likewise friendly back. The Magistrate sees this as flirtatious behavior. He begins to see a different side of the girl. The Magistrate finally has intercourse with the girl.

After two long weeks, they arrive in the mountains and are able to see the Indigenous community from a distance. After some wavering, the Magistrate finally decides on a course of action, which involves him dismounting his horse and walking toward them with his arms outstretched and open. He brings the girl to them, but before he officially relinquishes her, he has a change of heart and asks her if she’d like to stay with him. She declines, but this does not offend the Magistrate. Once the deal is done, the Magistrate returns to his men and leads them back to the settlement. The trip home is much shorter, and the weather has finally broken into spring. After the girl is returned to her community, the men realize the purpose of the journey and are resentful toward the Magistrate for keeping them in the dark. The return trip takes one week, and as they draw near to the settlement, they are approached by riders on horseback, who it turns out are part of a new regiment of soldiers sent to the settlement to begin a campaign against the nomadic community.

Part 3 Analysis

As the Magistrate and the girl travel further from the settlement, the Magistrate begins to see her differently. He sees her less as an object and instead finds qualities in her that he likes. When he sees her joking lightheartedly with the men in the traveling company, the Magistrate realizes that he had never seen this side of her. He says, “Perhaps if from the beginning I had known how to use this slap-happy joking lingo with her we might have warmed more to each other. But like a fool, instead of giving her a good time I oppressed her with gloom” (63). Most of his time spent with the girl was an act of him coming to grips with the cruelty imposed on her by the Empire, of which he is a part. Seeing her injuries and obsessively wanting to know the details behind them was the Magistrate’s central preoccupation. Once outside of the Empire’s territory, the Magistrate becomes less centered on her injuries. This might be due to the fact that he has alleviated the burden once he chose to bring her to her people. Keeping her as his object was merely a further imprisonment of her at the hands of the Empire. Getting outside the settlement and outside the territory of the empire releases him from his own complicity.

This change in his perception of her eventually culminates in intercourse. The sexual act between the two is only achieved once they are outside the Empire’s boundary. Again, at this point, the Magistrate is not acting as a representative of the Empire; in this case, he is acting like a man who does not have the stain of such cruelty. The guilt that he feels toward the girl’s injuries is lightened which frees him from his own thoughts. This is what enables him to finally desire the girl sexually.

When the outfit finally meets with the Indigenous leader, the Magistrate surprisingly offers the girl a choice to return to her people or to return with him. His feelings toward her have undergone a complete transformation. He recognizes that he will likely be relieved of his duties as magistrate and knows this is the impetus for his spontaneous decision to ask the girl to return with him. Importantly, when she declines the offer, the Magistrate accepts her decision willingly. He does not coerce or try to cajole her into it. In accepting the finality of her decision, he accepts her agency as an individual. By extension, he also implicitly accepts the agency of the community to which she belongs.