In Foe, history, as an act of narrative and remembrance, informs the relationships in the novel. The complications of identity and communication that arise within the book do so as a result of attempting some sort of preservation of history. These methods have severe limitations, they can not fully capture a time/moment/person as they were. So then there are choices to be made which are both conscious and unconscious that act as a supplement to the voids which there is no history for.
Susan's lost daughter is an example of how memory advances itself into history and becomes the thing it represents. Susan writes to Foe about the, "...correspondence between things as they are and the pictures we have of them in our minds"(65) The daughter is drawn out slowly through a series of recollections and through these memories evolves into a newer actuality, substantive enough that it can to serve as a resistance to the claims of a physical-psuedo daughter that seems to be a manufacturing of Foe. This marks an interesting contention that involves memory, history and the ways which they can be used.
In a conversation between Susan Barton and Captain Smith she states, "A liveliness is lost in the writing down which must be supplied by art..."(40) History, the sources of which are traditionally biographical/autobiographical, influences how we know things which then instructs how we come to see them. This is history as an organic entity that exists outside of a specific design. This is what I see being deconstructed in the novel.
In Foe history is a fabrication. To convey past events in a way as to be identical is not possible. History is an act guided by choice, an art created because, "...the world expects stories..."(34) Friday, Crusoe, Susan all experience the island in a specific time and in a specific reality. Even in memories the exactness which marks that time and reality is impossible to reattain. This is where language remedies that absence by providing narrative. By employing a fictive technique to represent memories or documentation we reinvent them in a way that places them farther and farther away from their origins.
Friday's muteness presents an interesting idea. Since it does not exclude him from history because through memory he is able to engage in a sort of history, does Friday's memories come closer to capturing that exactness because he is not subject to language. What is history without words? Perhaps it is something "without interruption"(157) existing purely on signals. Foe suggests that, "In every story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word unspoken...Till we have spoken the unspoken we have not come to the heart of the story."(141)
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteYou have brought up some very interesting points and I like your analysis of memories and how history is recorded within the text. The remembrance of past events such as Susan's daughter and her memory of her, Susan's time on the island - along with Friday and Crusoe and her time with Friday on the boat as Crusoe is dying is a significant reminder to the reader that each of these events/times/people and place all have their own memories and stories to tell, however when recorded they will always be different from person to person. Details change and they change even more so when Foe wishes to alter Susan's real story. In a way, as I reflect more and more on this novel and the use of memory (as you so eloquently have brought up), I begin to see how no matter what I will experience in my life, the memory of it may not be 100% as accurate as it was when it happened. It could be said, that perhaps, Coetzee is also prodding us to preserve history, memories, and the times in which they happened. It can be for a personal purpose but for a social one as well. It is said that history always repeats itself. Well, wouldn't we as a nation and planet learn from our mistakes? Unfortunately, only the "victors" get to record history, so whose responsibility is it t to track all aspects of events? Not just the "winners", but the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Christine van Eyck
I agree with your analysis that in Foe history is a fabrication. But I am still rather disturbed by Susan Barton's insistence on the "truth" of her story, as she tells it. It seems then that her desire to not have her story over-embellished (and that is probably significant, that she's willing to have some "artful" fabrication to a point) is less a desire for some objective (or even subjective) truth, but rather a kind of power struggle over authorship and authority over history. Will it be HER story still if Foe changes it too much? Obviously, Susan doesn't think so. I think then, language insomuch as a source of reinvention, of narrative, is also a place of conflict. Friday, in a parallel way, can be seen as trying to retain control over his language, his story, the story of his tongue (i.e. his language itself).
ReplyDelete- Nina Ahn
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI found your post incredibly interesting and insightful. I've studied the role memory has in understanding history (in my research through studying memoirs of the Holocaust) and often times the 'characters'/'victims' often manipulate and change their understandings of events whether because of the passage of time, the traumatic experience, or in a sense because of the person's own subconscious want/need to manipulate the events that transpired. I feel that the latter fits with Susan Barton and her interaction with Foe, Crusoe, Friday and the island.
I agree with you when you state: "In Foe history is a fabrication. To convey past events in a way as to be identical is not possible. History is an act guided by choice, an art created because, "...the world expects stories..."(34) Friday, Crusoe, Susan all experience the island in a specific time and in a specific reality", a reality that I feel is often manipulated by whomever it is that is recording and remembering (Susan). Susan often references her portrayal of Cruso as complex and dynamic, changing and often a product of her own imagination/understanding. She states from the beginning the complexity of attempting to understand and record Cruso stating "..I was more and more driven to conclude age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory, and he no longer for sure what is truth, what fancy" (11-12). I think that this quote very much exemplifies your point. Here Susan is describing the tolls of time and isolation on memory and contrasting, however ironically, the inabilities to understand truth. This is is very much an underlining theme of the novel, as the story of the island is passed from Cruso's experiences, to Susan's recordings to Defoe's novel, much of the story is fabricated and manipulated, questioning the role of truth vs reality, memory vs manipulation, language vs story telling.
Lastly I'd like to address a question you pose "does Friday's memories come closer to capturing that exactness because he is not subject to language. What is history without words?" I believe that Friday's memories, Friday's narrative is the only truth. Not corrupted by the rules of storytelling, and more importantly the rules and boundaries of language/society, Friday's story is really the only one that I feel is real and valid. Everything else is subject to interpretation, fabrication and manipulation, but as Nina said before me "Friday can be seen as trying to retain control over his language, his story, the story of his tongue (i.e. his language itself)". It is the only story of truth because it is the only story that is his alone.
Great response!
Jessica Glick