Reading 1001 discussion

2. What are the magistrate's emotions over the course of his time with the nomad woman, particularly his change of mood during their journey together?

He is attracted to her and wants to help her because he feels guilty about the torture she endured. I think, during the journey, he came close to falling in love, but I'm not sure he was capable of love. She, on the other hand, just wanted out. I do think his experiences with her did shape his future resistance to the Empire.

I don't know if he was attracted to her. He was attracted to women and had a reputation of womanizer but in this case the attraction was his guilt and shame that while he was magistrate this harm had been done to her and he did not try to stop it and in someway he was trying to make amends.

I am with Kristel on this one, while they are in the settlement he has no sexual desire for her instead their interactions are based on him trying to soothe the injuries she has been given. When they are travelling through the desert I think the fear of mortality leads them to have a sexual relationship he is not unhappy when she decides to leave him so it wasn't a deep and meaningful relationship.

I have no idea. His relationship with her at the settlement is simply bizarre, fetishistic. If it was just about easing the pain of her injuries it certainly wouldn't have involved both of them naked in bed. The only physical injuries we are told about are her ankles and her eyes - nightly naked full body massage certainly seems to have a sexual component.

When I read this novel, I kept thinking of July's People by Nadine Gordimer, where the "good" white family had such a close relationship with their black servant, thinking that they understood him and his needs fully, realising later that they did not understand him so well when they escaped to his village during the Johannesbourg Riots. To me, the Magistrate is one of those "good" whites who empathises with the Barbarians' plight and thinks he understands them a bit better because of his relationship with the nomad woman, but then realises he was probably wrong in his assumptions after he "releases" her back to her tribe. It is an allegory of the gulf of cultural misunderstanding between whites and blacks in South Africa, I guess.