Ever heard of a little book called Robinson Crusoe? Well actually not so little at all, it's a bit of a whopper. A long and boring whopper at that. I know I read it once upon a time, but of course now that it's actually important I can't remember a thing. All I remember is thinking that the movie must be more interesting than the tedious pages I was slowly moving through.
Thankfully, I am evidently not the only one who thought so. Yesterday afternoon I picked up J.M. Coetzee's book Foe, and by last night I had read every page. The novel is something like a parallel of Robinson Crusoe except that it is actually interesting.
In very simple terms, the novel follows a woman as she is castaway, meets the character Cruso and his man Friday on an island, then is rescued and attempts to write a book about her experiences. Embedded in there is some cool stuff about postmodernism and even some absurdist and linguistic bits thrown in for good measure. The first 152 pages of the novel are quite an interesting read in and of themselves.
Then there is the last chapter.
Chapter IV is an enigma, for lack of better description. At first glance it has little to do with the novel and is clearly written in an entirely different vein. However, with some deeper thought, this chapter is the most important of the entire novel. I will attempt my analysis this chapter assuming that my blog reader has also read Foe. This will discuss the last four pages of the novel, p. 153-157.
The chapter seems to take place sometime in the future. The route up to the room our protagonist was last in is described as "dark and mean," which is our first indication of something ominous. The person ascending comes across a woman, and although it is not specified it is immediately clear to the reader that the woman is dead. She is wrapped as a mummy would be in an endless scarf, and she is describes as, "weigh[ing] no more than a sack of straw." Previously in the novel, the main character Susan is concerned about the reality of a girl claiming to be her long lost daughter. Just the page before, Susan and her writer Foe are involved in a conversation as to whether or not the girl is "substantial." This comparison of the girl to a "sack of straw" would seem to indicate that Susan was correct. The girl was not a complete person, made up of straw like a scarecrow.
Next the narrator sees two people in bed. Their skin is taught and "their lips have receded, uncovering their teeth." They too are obviously dead, again seemingly mummified. The reader can easily infer that these two are Susan and Foe. As "their eyes are closed" it would seem that they died at peace in their sleep. They are described as smelling of lilac, which symbolizes both love and innocence. This is interesting because Susan and Foe were not in love, nor was either of them innocent. Quite to the contrary actually. The smell is indicative of the contraditions that Susan and Foe embody.
Friday, still in his alcove, is still alive. This sets of the magical feel of this chapter. Obviously, if Susan and Foe are mummified, a very long time has passed. And yet Friday's "skin is warm." This is our first indication that Friday is eternal, so clearly he symbolizes something. Later the narrator diescovers, "a scar like a necklace, left by a rope or chain." Remember that earlier Susan had put a necklace on Friday containing his freedom papers. The reader can recognize now how Friday has been permanently scarred, both figuratively and literally, by Susan. Friday is a black African slave and Susan effectively his master. Clearly it is the enslavement by the white people that has cause the black man's scarring. However, Friday is still alive. Neither the enslavement nor the enslavers have killed the spirit of Friday. He will in fact live long past them, always bearing the scars they gave him.
Still, Friday will not speak. He will not even open his mouth when pressed to do so. Only of his own accord does his mouth open, and then the sounds of the island come out. The island for both Cruso and Friday symbolized a kind of freedom. Friday thus speaks only of what has made him free.
There is a plaque on the wall with the name Daniel DeFoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. Interestingly, the words below are too small to read. This lets the reader of Foe make his own epitaph for Daniel DeFoe.
The narrator reads a page on the table containing the words, "Dear Mr. Foe, At last I could row no further." These are the words from the opening of the novel itself. So the reader can infer that it is actually we who have stepped into this room. We are seeing the novel we are currently reading sitting on a table. Again, there is an air of unreality. Or perhaps true reality, as we are invited to make our own interpretations rather than relying on the interpretations of Susan or Coetzee as they write their books.
However, the words go on to become not the words we had read in the opening of the novel. Instead the narrative describes the person sinking into the water off the island where Friday laid out his petals. The "gay little fish" are now gone. These fish were a sign of life and hope, but they are now gone. The writer attempts to hold a candle up, but it gives off no light, no understanding. Something obstructs the unknown writer, and they describe the water as "dirty." Something terrible has happened in this water.
The writer discovers Susan and the captain of her original ship dead and floating in the water. They are described as "fat as pigs." Friday is there as well. The writer "finger[s] the chain about his throat." So, the underwater Friday is still in captivity. But the words the writer speaks become "filled with water" and don't come out... instead the "bodies are their own signs." This is reminiscent of Saussure's signifier and signified. For Friday, who cannot speak, the bodies are the outward signs of ideas. Susan and her captain are "fat" because they have gained so much off the misfortune of the slaves.
Again the writer tries to open Friday's mouth. This time, however, when his mouth opens the reader encounters a "slow stream" that "washes... the island" and "beats... against the skin of my face." This is Friday's world. Without words, he is now washing clean the experiences throughout the book and also the reader.
Overall, this is Friday's chapter. Coetzee chose to give him no voice through the novel because he, Coetzee, did not have the experience with which to voice him correctly. But this chapter is for him. Friday is eternal. He will not die, as Susan does. Susan embodies the white colonialists and slave drivers who will eventually lose their lives. Friday, the spirit of Africa, lives on. Although he is scarred by the efforts of the colonialists he will break free of their chains and continue to live. Eventually those who come after will be able to see, as if they are reading in a book, what really happened to those like Friday. Perhaps this chapter does not take place at a future point in the novel, but rather in the real time of the reader. Perhaps in reality Susan died in the mutiny. In an abstract way, her entire story was then her concoction of reality. The whole novel then, up until the last chapter, was the colonialist viewpoint of the island and the escape. Only now, when the colonialists have passed, can the real story be understood. And in the end, this reality will be inescapable. The reader, symbolic of the people of the world, will finally know Friday's story. It will beat against our faces and softly force us to understand it.
