Waiting For Hatred and Lies?

Given that Chiuna Achebe found the ideas and the author behind Heart of Darkness to be racist, he might also consider J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians to be racist as well. One particular scene that stuck out to me was when the narrator was speaking to Colonial Joll early on in the book about how Joll can distinguish lies from the truth when trying to find information about his prisoners AKA “the barbarians” through torture. This scene represents and begins to delve into how judgmental the character of Joll truly is (as he is the antagonist of the book). There is a portion where the magistrate (the narrator) asks how Joll would know if a prisoner is telling the truth. In response, Joll says that there is a “certain tone” that can be heard through “training and experience”. That “training and experience” that Joll speaks of could possibly be a bias, as the magistrate asks him immediately if he is speaking the truth at that moment in time. Joll’s response is: “No, you misunderstand me. I am speaking of a special situation… in which I have to exert pressure to find it. [the truth]” If I were looking at it from Achebe’s point of view, I would have reason to believe that this whole “certain tone” business is quite flawed and is basically an excuse to persecute people that Joll does not favor, regardless of any necessity of information, as the torture is truly the “tone of truth” that Joll speaks of. It’s a small portion of the book, but this section is particularly important to the idea of Joll being against “barbarians” in torturing and imprisoning them.