Foe by J.M. Coetzee

by BookRags

Foe Study Guide consists of approx. 34 pages of summaries and analysis on Foe by J. M. Coetzee.

This study guide includes the following Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

Genres: Classics

30 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 14, 2010

Reviews

[Project · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can see what Coetzee is trying to do here, but i'm not so sure that he's successful. Written in a particularly suffocating incarnation of the epistolary form, he seems to be exploring the dynamics of the relationship between writer and writee: that whole muse thing.[return]Susan Barton is the heavily agendaed correspondent who carries the storyline, blurring in the process not only her relationship with Foe, the famous author who is supposed to be writing her story proper like, but also the connection between her reality and the reality of others. We as reader are left ultimately unsure of what has happened, due to the claustrophobic limitations of the "incompetent narrator" device. The ending slips completely out of everyone's reality, and left this humble reader a little disappointed, since it seemed such a glib refusal to resolve the complex relationship issues raised.[return]Maybe that refusal was the whole point. If so, it wasn't a very interesting or useful point.[return]While the muse conundrum was the thematic focus, the whole tongue thing was the real engineroom of this novel. What happened to Friday's tongue seems to be a symbol of the relationship between author (master) and muse/subject (slave). If so, it is not as effective (again, to this humble reader) as the simple statement at one point of Foe's appropriation of Barton's story from her intended desert isle adventure into a quest tale following a mother looking for her child.[return]I've spoken to a few people about Foe, and many don't even finish, losing patience with it. Had they followed it to the end, i'm not sure they would have liked what they found.[return]I just hope it's not semiautobiographical.[return]Oh, and i think that the last thing Coetzee was trying to do here was to write the story behind the writing of Robinson Crusoe. I've read that novel (in the original, not the Disney form), and this simply isn't about that. It's using the DeFoe novel as a touchstone only, a point of recognition. So we can see how things can shift.

[sam °❀⋆.ೃ࿔* · Rating 4 out of 5]

short and easy to read. gave me a bit to think about, notably the relationship between story and author. dream ending to me suggests that the pursuit of the "real" truth is impossible as we cannot account for so much of our waking lives.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro piuttosto complesso sopratutto nel suo finale. Da leggere e poi confrontarlo con il libro Robisno Crusoe di Daniel Defoe.

[Julia Molloy · Rating 3 out of 5]

J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, from an author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, is not normally the sort of novel I’d enjoy – it is essentially told as a monologue, the main character uses overly formal language, and we’re left with an ambiguous ending. Yet Coetzee’s tale of a woman castaway on an island with the enigmatic Cruso and his mute servant Friday is one to remember.

When Susan Barton is rescued and returned to England with Friday after Cruso’s death, she finds herself being the only one who can articulate what had happened to her and what life had been like on the island. She convinces Daniel Foe to set down her story as a novel, but discovers that her memories and her past are slipping away from her until all she is left with is Friday.

Despite the shortness of Foe, I really felt as though I had been taken on a journey, not just to an island off the coast of Brazil and back, but with Susan Barton’s character. At first I was irritated by her monologue and by her tendency to focus on one point for far too long. But by the end, I really felt sorry for Susan and how her time as a castaway had clearly affected her perception of truth versus tale.

Foe’s main issue for me is the ambiguity of the final few pages, where Susan is apparently dreaming (although we are not entirely sure of this). So many things are left unsaid or unexplained that I was disappointed at being cheated out of a sense of closure. What happened to Susan’s lost daughter? Who is Friday and how did he come to be mute? How did Cruso truly end up on the island?

J. M. Coetzee’s Foe is enjoyable and certainly thought-provoking. What it lacks in a complete ending it makes up for in Susan Barton’s character. Well worth the read, but don’t expect to finish it entirely happy.

[Stephan Benzkofer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very much an intellectual exercise, and not a very satisfying or provocative read. It twists the Robinson Crusoe story by adding a woman castaway to the island. She is rescued and ends up asking an author named Daniel Foe to write her tale. The book is told mostly through the letters from the woman to Mr. Foe. The book blurb says Coetzee "explores the relationships between speech and silence, master and slave, sanity and madness." Explores seems too strong in this case. Maybe "brings up for discussion later" would be more accurate.

[EH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pues el verdadero peligro de la vida en una isla, ese peligro del cual Cruso nunca dijo una sola palabra, es el peligro de dejarse vencer por el sue��o. ��Qu�� f��cil habr��a sido prolongar nuestro sue��o profundo, consagrarle m��s y m��s horas cada vez de luz diurna hasta que al fin, cautivos de su f��rreo abrazo, hubi��semos perecido de inanici��n!