'Waiting for the Barbarians'

In Chinua Achebe's criticism of 'Heart of Darkness', Achebe emphasized the fact that Conrad portrayed Africa to be "the other world" (para. 7), the geographical location where the Europeans, or colonizers in general, chose to settle and dominate and make of the civilians nothing but beasts, degrade them in a way that practically wiped them off of any existing map.

This can also be seen in the first two chapters of 'Waiting for the Barbarians'. Coetzee describes, through the Magistrate's eyes, a group of barbarians, which included men, women, elders, and children, that were sent to this undisclosed location and were held as prisoners. They were beaten and tortured; for example, the one girl that was left behind that the Magistrate took in as his companion had both her feet broken and was now blind. Some of these prisoners even died. Based on what Achebe wrote in his essay about 'Heart of Darkness', he would read this book and point out how these barbarians were treated as animals, without a legitimate reason; they were sent to that location by Colonel Joll to be interrogated but in the end, they had nothing prosecuting to say. Either way, they were treated as savages (with the exception of this one girl).