Rupert Deese

HSA 10-2

February 25, 2012

無A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”

Joshu answered: “Mu.”

The offering of this koan, arguably the most famous piece of the Zen canon, is not an an-

swer. Rather, the koan is a reminder that some answers cannot be articulated. Perhaps Zen Bud-

dhism and postmodern literature make for strange bedfellows, but J. M. Coetzee’s novel Foe has

a very koan-like central message. In Foe, Coetzee combines the struggle of writers to understand

their own authorship, and the collective struggle of society to both comprehend and redress black

slavery. Coetzee draws attention to the natural occurrence of koan-like illogic, incompleteness,

and inconsistency in Foe to dismiss the importance of a truthful and complete narrative, with re-

gard to both authorship and enslavement.

The main conflict in Foe is Susan’s confrontation of the challenges of authorship. Susan

struggles to produce a truthful account of her life as a castaway. Her motives provide a classical

argument for the importance of factual narration that Foe deconstructs. Coetzee must articulate

this argument in order to pick it apart, but even his explanation of Susan’s motives begins to ex-

plore the difficulties of crafting an objective narrative. Susan has two requirements for her ac-

count. Coetzee uses these to illuminate why she wants an account of her adventures to exist, but

also why her designs to have the story written ultimately fail.

Deese 2

Susan’s first requirement is that the account be written by someone else. She does not be-

lieve that she can write the account herself. She entreats the character Foe, an author, to take her

own rudimentary account that she believes to be lacking, and “return to me the substance I have

lost” (51). Susan is convinced that only he can “tell the truth in all its substance” (51). When Foe

disappears Susan is deprived of the means to put her story to words, despite being perfectly able

to write. She believes that real, substantive truth requires the right “words with which to capture

the vision” (42). Foe’s skill in writing enables him to write the true story, while Susan cannot.

Secondly, Susan requires that her story remain exactly as she imagines it. When Foe ex-

presses interest in writing her account, she refuses to be complicit in any of his designs on the

story itself. Foe asks “how it was that Cruso did not save a single musket from the wreck” and

“why a man so fearful of cannibals should have neglected to arm himself” (53). Susan regards

these questions as attempts to change her story and the underlying reality of her experience. Her

defensive response to his questions support this argument. At one point she writes tersely: “All I

say is: What I saw, I wrote. I saw no cannibals” (54), as if Foe’s mention of cannibals suggests a

desire to invent them, subverting her account of the story. Ironically, Susan retaliates against

Foe’s perceived interference with her own inventions. In response to a question from Foe about

whether Cruso had a musket, Susan provides an entirely fanciful description of the day that

“Cruso leapt overboard with the youthful Friday at his side, … but they two alone were saved, by

a great wave that caught them up” (54). Susan refuses all of Foe’s attempts to put his own ideas

into the work, even rejecting his suggestion to expand the story to her life beyond the island. In-

deed, the proposal causes her to feel as though “all the joy … fled me” (117). Susan cares deeply

about protecting her story from idea and inventions that are not her own.

Deese 3

Susan’s joint requirements that her story remain unmodified, and that it be written by

someone else, prevent it from being written. Yet she singularly pursues the goal of having Foe

write it. She suffers much hardship for the sake of persuading Foe to write for her, including a

multi-day journey on foot to Bristol, “barefoot” and “in breeches” (99). Susan tells Friday that

the published story will “make us famous throughout the land, and rich too” (58), yet fame and

fortune would just as easily be gained from a fabricated story. This motive does not explain Su-

san’s obsessive control of the story’s details. Her true motive and desire is to preserve the truth.

On the island, Susan asks Cruso if he wants to ensure “that what you have passed through shall

not die from memory” (17). She equates writing with the preservation of truth, and cannot

fathom that Cruso does not wish to eternalize his memories through “paper and ink” (17). Su-

san’s belief that words can faithfully preserve truth explains her driving desire to have the story

of the island written down, and also explains the importance of her two inconvenient require-

ments.

Susan expounds the virtues of language as the communicator of truth. She tries to explain

the “magic of words” (58) to Friday, who she presumes to be ignorant. This magic is no less than

the communication of truth without experience. Words and language allow people to understand

the truth of things that they have not experienced. Susan explains: “Mr Foe has not met you, but

he knows of you, from what I have told him, using words” (58). This is a simple point, but one

which is implicit in all of Susan’s behavior. It is the foundation of her faith that, having “set

down the history of our time on the island” in writing for Foe, he will be able to “set it right”

(47). It also explains her belief that she can set Friday free by means of “a deed … hung on a

cord” (99) around his neck. In Susan’s eyes, language stands on equal footing with actions and

events.

Deese 4

Susan’s conviction of the importance of language is also the foundation of her opinions

about Friday. Because Friday lacks the use of words, he must be a “poor simpleton” (39). Her

observation that “the very notion of speech may be lost to him” (57), causes her to treat him as

though he has no intelligence at all. In one instance, Susan stands before Friday holding a spoon,

intoning “Spoon, Friday!” (57) Susan already knows that Friday does not understand language,

yet she continues to try to measure Friday’s intelligence through his recognition of words. This

condescending action indicates that she cannot conceive of any method of understanding that

does not involve language. Susan’s belief that language precedes understanding again shows that

she believes words and truth are one and the same.

Coetzee liberally uses Susan as a foil, pitting her initial confidence in the universal, expli-

catory powers of language against illogic, incompleteness, and inconsistency. The failure of her

philosophy in every case increases her confusion about how language relates to truth. Each fail-

ure highlights another disparity between truth and language. Together, like any good koan, they

show that words and truth are unrelated; that the author’s reliance on words makes him (or her) a

foe of truth.

Coetzee first shows that words can represent fiction as easily as they do fact. In the be-

ginning of Part II, Susan describes her position as “close servant” to Foe, and his dusty writing

room and window view of “pasture” and “ploughed land” (50). Yet when Susan actually visits

Foe’s house, and finds him to be in hiding, she notes that “the window overlooks not woods and

pastures” (65) but a garden, and a dozen other differences from her earlier description. Susan

tells Foe that “it is not … as I imagined it would be” (65), revealing that her prior narrative of

life as Foe’s close servant was an invention, an utter lie. Susan presents two accounts, which

stand on equal footing but contradict each other. It is illogical to accept both, but to choose be-

Deese 5

tween the two requires a recognition that words are an imperfect description of reality. Susan

firmly believes that writing down the truth will preserve it, but her own writing shows that there

is no way to distinguish worded truths from worded falsehoods.

Coetzee takes this disparity between words and truth to an extreme in the characters of

Amy and the child Susan Barton, who epitomize the contradictions that language makes possi-

ble. They carry “long stories of a past in which they will claim [Susan] was an actor too” (130),

but Susan denies ever having known them. To her dismay she finds that in the realm of language

she cannot distinguish her account from theirs in terms of importance. She compares herself to “a

bottle bobbing on the waves” (130): the worded message she contains is no better or worse than

any other--it “could as well be a message from an idle child … as from a mariner” (130). Susan

believes that Foe is responsible for Amy and the child Susan’s existence, that they are “actors”

(130), whose characters are “father-born” (91) from Foe’s mind. In this interpretation, the author

Foe has used the craft of language to create “substantial ghosts” (132) that occupy reality. Yet

there is no way to distinguish between the real and the ghosts; through language Foe creates lies

that stand on equal footing with the truth.

Since Susan believes that the refuge of truth is in words, these contradictions and their il-

logic cause her to question her identity. She despairs that “all my life grows to be a story, and

there is nothing of my own left to me” (133). As a result, she can no longer distinguish to what

order she belongs; she is unsure if she is real or fictional. Thus Susan’s struggle with authorship

concludes in chaos. She is unable to convert her life experience into a story, and is increasingly

unable to distinguish the story of her life from the stories that Foe creates. All narratives, those

invented and those inspired by reality, are of the same substance.

Deese 6

Foe asks, “may it not be that [God] wrote a Word so long we have yet to come to the end

of it?” (143) Foe suggests that God is writing the world, and concludes from the paradox of au-

thorship that language and objective truth are not related. Foe equates writing with new creation

of new truth, rather than the representation of an existing reality. This process of creation entraps

and defines all of the characters in Foe that rely on language. Yet it has very different implica-

tions for the one who does not.

Friday does not use language and does not understand it; he has no relation to it.

Throughout Foe, Susan and Foe struggle to understand Friday. Susan attempts to rationalize his

character by giving him language, and tries to teach him to speak, or at least comprehend spoken

words. She alternately tries applying language to him, either giving him a written deed to make

him ‘free,’ or inventing stories to explain his past. Yet these attempts fail, and even at the end of

Part III, Susan and Foe know nothing of Friday. The stories they invent for him are new truths

they have created, no closer to his real past than the silence which they serve to fill. Within the

world of language, Friday is incomprehensible.

In the Epilogue, Coetzee condemns Susan’s attempts to fit language to Friday’s reality.

He walks through the oneiric landscape of the story he has just written. He discovers that Fri-

day’s deed to freedom has harmed him, observing that “about his neck is a scar like a necklace”

(155). This symbolism implies that language has done more hurt to Friday than it has done good.

Coetzee ultimately says outright that “the home of Friday” “is a place where bodies are their own

signs” (157). Coetzee draws from his koan-like demonstration that language cannot always be

used to express truth the same conclusion that Edward Said comes to in his “Politics of Knowl-

edge.” Namely, that naming and the use of words will not rationalize or redress the harms of

slavery, only add to the oppression another layer of white inventions.

Deese 7

As a testament that this is the case, Friday speaks. The answer that he gives is not a tradi-

tional one. He opens his mouth and “from inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, with-

out interruption” (157). Friday’s answer is wordless; it is nothing; it is the same as Joshu’s. In

both the famous koan and Foe, the final resolution is a truth that lies beyond the grasp of lan-

guage. In reality, there is a truth, just as Friday is as substantial as Susan, although he lacks

speech. In language, there is only a void. The Chinese character 無 has been translated as “not,”

“nothing,” or “without.” It is often anglicized as “mu.”