Foe

Hello readers:) This is a response blog task given by my teacher on J. M. Coetzee's Foe my teacher gave 6 questions and we answered 3 questions. 

J. M. Coetzee

Question:1

How would you differentiate the Character of Cruso and Crusoe? 

“I would gladly now recount to you the history of the singular Cruso, as I heard it from his own lips. But the stories he told me were so various, and so hard to reconcile one with another… age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory, and he no longer knew for sure what was truth” (Coetzee, 11-12)

This quote from Coetzee’s Foe

Cruso’s lack of journaling is a stark contrast to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is much less passive and senile in regards to his own development on the island. Crusoe kept a painfully detailed account of every action he does on the island in a journal he updates daily. In this journal, Crusoe meticulously records every step for all of the tools he crafts, and he writes about his own progress with his newly acquitted relationship with religion. This Robinson Crusoe is much more in tune with his own reality and interested in his own accomplishments than Foe’s Cruso. This is also evident in the number of tools and objects that Robinson Crusoe makes in comparison to Cruso. Robinson Crusoe fills his multiple homes with various types of pots, tables, chairs, fences, and even a canoe. All of these items Crusoe builds are to improve and aide in his growth on the island, and he must be mentally sharp in order to build these items. Cruso in Foe has not put any effort towards building tools, as he only has a bed when Susan arrives at the island, and from the quote, it seems like he may not have the mental capacity to build these tools. Although Cruso does builds many terraces, he exclaims that they are for the future generations and not himself.

Question:2

Friday's Characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe? 

In Robinson Crusoe

FRIDAY: A handsome, about 26 years old, with straight and strong limbs, tall and well-shaped fellow whose bare name is Friday , which he got for the memory of the day he was rescued.

The native was saved from certain death by Robinson Crusoe during one of the cannibal rituals of a local tribe. By the man who was actually on his way to Africa to buy Negroes!

In my opinion, Friday’s total submission released Robinson from the sort of guilt and the need to use violence. He was Crusoe’s slave because he was saved by him and lifelong servitude was accepted by Robinson. The servant-master relationship was symbolically sealed by an oath, a substitute for the written contract.

In Foe

Friday slowly emerges as the heart of the novel. He is a slave who lives on the island with the man who is ostensibly his master. Cruso says that a slaver cut out Friday's tongue many years ago and Cruso never taught Friday any language beyond the most rudimentary instruction. This inability to communicate leaves Friday trapped in a silent world. Friday leaves the island and travels to England but it is only at the novel's end that he comes close to being able to express himself. The journey toward this act of self-expression emerges as the narrative of the novel. Friday attempts to express himself in a number of different ways. He ritually scatters petals on the sea, he plays music on his homemade flute, and he performs frenzied dances. Friday imbues these actions with a private meaning that is unknown to the rest of the world. Susan is the only person who attempts to glean meaning from these actions but she fails to understand their significance. Friday is shut inside his silent world even when he is trying to communicate. Friday eventually learns to write. Though he can only write a single letter over and over, it is the first step toward a shared understanding of Friday's pain. Foe and Susan provide Friday with a voice by teaching him to write. Meaning no longer has to be projected onto Friday's actions. He finally possesses the tools to make the world understand his pain.

Question:3

Is Susan reflecting white mentality of Crusoe

( Robinson Crusoe)? 

In Part Three Susan has assumed the position of an author; she speaks the language of 

authority and acts in control. The narrative of Cruso with Foe in charge of casting it the right 

way shifts hands and comes to the possession of Susan. Her reflections on the art of storytelling 

are authorial and political. She is open to those elements which will make her island experience a 

worthy, readable narrative. There are unanswered questions in the narrative and like any good 

craftsman of fiction she wants to address those mysteries. “I ask these questions because these 

are the questions any reader of our story will ask” (86). Susan proves adept at manipulating 

words symbolizing narrative power.

Which is reflecting the power of master narrative like white master always as a powerful person. 

In the very beginning he is described by Susan as having a “flat face”, “small dull 

eyes”, a “broad nose” and “thick lips” . . . “He reached out and with the back of his hand 

touched [Susan’s] arm. He is trying my flesh, I thought” . On page 104, when Susan finds 

Friday sleeping as a “normal” human she is surprised, because she thought that “savages 

[sleep] with one eye open” . Further, when travelling to Bristol they find a dead baby in 

a ditch and Susan then imagines Friday eating the corpse of the baby. During the same

journey they go into an alehouse and they are not being served because of Friday’s skin 

colour and of his lack of shoes.Moreover, on the island Friday is treated as a servant by 

Cruso, he is taught no more than the few words which are needed to serve the white man. As 

stated by Cruso “Friday [has] no need of words” . 

On the boat, during their way back to London, Susan forces the crew to let Friday 

sleep close to his “master’s” door. This can be interpreted as a way of having him among the 

people he knows, but at the same time he has to sleep outside Cruso’s door, like a dog. Susan 

says that “he would rather sleep on the floor at his master’s feet than on the softest bed in 

Christendom” . 

The indication of Friday’s lack of a tongue is another example of treating him like a 

savage, because the “savages” were not supposed to have language or history. Gayatri 

Chakravorty Spivak says in her article “Theory in the Margin: Coetze’s Foe Reading Defoe’s 

Crusoe/Roxana” that “barbarians by definition do not speak language” . Friday’s 

muteness symbolizes the lack of voice of the colonised people. Susan’s thoughts about Friday being a cannibal indicate how she is affected by the Western world’s prevailing idea of the African’s and other colonized nations’ savagery (Kehinde 99). When inhabiting Foe’s house together with Susan, Friday dances his “dervish dance” (Jiménez 13) dressed in Foe’s robe and a wig. During his spinning the robe stands around his body and Susan sees his nakedness underneath and she assumes that he is castrated, “unmanned” (Coetzee 119). Since the book almost exclusively contains Susan’s own interpretations and conclusions, the reader does not know for sure if Friday really lacks his 

“manhood” and his tongue. By being black, Friday is already the Other and the probable lack of his “manhood” deepens his subjugation. Thus, his “lack” of rationality deepens as well: he is black, without voice and he is not properly male either. Friday does not speak, but he has several other ways of expressing himself. On the island Susan hears him playing a kind of flute. Later she sees him floating on a log of wood in the sea scattering flowers, and in London he spins around disguised in Foe’s robe and a wig. When handed a piece of chalk, Friday starts drawing eyes with feet. All these things are his means of communication, but is there anyone to listen? Susan, albeit trying to learn his story and set him free, does not seem to understand or does not care for what Friday is trying to say. 

Susan coming England with Friday she trying make him educated, dressed like Englishman learn Dance and many others things like she was also white master of Friday.